Chris Hemsworth almost came back as George Kirk along with Chris Pine in the J.J. Abrams-produced Star Trek 4, but the project is still in limbo.
Chris Hemsworth reportedly walked away from Star Trek 4 after the studio failed to negotiate the right number for his salary in the movie. Hemsworth played George Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot of Star Trek, but the character died in the first movie in the trilogy. However, through some space hijinks, he was set to return and join Chris Pine in an adventure.
Hemsworth has given other reasons for his departure from the sequel, with his concerns mainly being the script. He also had reservations about his return now, as it had been over fifteen years since the character was killed on screen, and any kind of ‘Time Nexus-y’ concept would require him to look the same age. He said to Josh Horowitz,
It wasn’t what I sort of where I was thinking it would have been or could have been. I thought there would be, ‘Okay, cool, let’s figure that out and keep going.’ And then I think everyone got busy and so on…It would be weird now to flash back to your father and ‘why is he so much older than the first time when he died?’
There have been multiple changes in personnel and in key creatives with respect to Star Trek 4, with no one really having any idea on how to take it forward after Star Trek Beyond.
Why Chris Hemsworth Said No to Star Trek 4 After JJ Abrams Hinted He’s in It
Two years before he became the God of Thunder, Thor, in the MCU, Chris Hemsworth played George Kirk in the prologue of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. A first officer being promoted to Captain in the final moments of a Starfleet ship, the USS Kelvin’s destruction, Hemsworth had an emotional moment as he listened to the birth of Kirk’s son minutes before his death.
While Hemsworth did not return for Star Trek Into Darkness or Beyond, J.J. Abrams, who took on a producer role, hinted at his involvement in a potential fourth movie even before the release of Beyond. Abrams reportedly hinted at plans for Star Trek 4 with Chris Pine and Hemsworth as a father-son duo (via Collider).
However, that never came to be as rumors of a salary negotiation going awry began to circulate. According to THR, Hemsworth and Pine were asked to take a pay cut due to the dismal box office performance of Star Trek Beyond, so that a big-budget 4th movie could still be mounted. Both the actors reportedly walked away from the deal.
Chris Hemsworth mentioned that he walked out of the sequel because he did not love the script, and he did not want to be underwhelmed by his return (via Variety).
I didn’t feel like we landed on a reason to revisit that yet. I didn’t want to be underwhelmed by what I was going to bring to the table.
Hemsworth, however, mentioned that he was not ruling out the possibility and that if J.J. Abrams called him and said they were shooting tomorrow, he would be ready (via Trek Movie). The fourth movie has undergone plenty of iterations now, with directors like Noah Hawley, S.J. Clarkson, and even Quentin Tarantino being attached at one point. However, it is currently in limbo.
What a Possible Star Trek 4 Storyline Will Look Like With Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine
While there isn’t a lot of information about the exact storyline for the various Star Trek 4 interpretations by filmmakers, we actually know what the Chris Hemsworth-Chris Pine father-son adventure J.J. Abrams and the team were planning. Writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who worked on Rings of Power, revealed the storyline.
Payne and McKay mentioned that Hemsworth’s George Kirk was going to join Pine’s James Kirk by a ‘cosmic quirk’, which included him being stuck in a time capsule of sorts. Inspired by the TNG episode ‘Relics’, Payne compared the science to a text message (via Esquire).
Think about when you send a text message and you’ve typed it out, but you haven’t quite hit send. On the other side, they see those three little dots that someone has typed. It’s like the transporter had absorbed his pattern up into the pattern buffer, but hadn’t spit him out on the other side. It was actually a saved copy of him that was in the computer.
He mentioned that right before his apparent death in Star Trek, what if George Kirk had tried to beam himself to his son but had been stuck between the points for years, and when he was beamed back in from the destroyed USS Kelvin, he had not aged a day. They also mentioned that they had a really cool villain set up, and the duo would team up to tackle the antagonist.
