Star Trek: Section 31 | |
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Genre | |
Based on | Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry |
Written by | Craig Sweeny |
Directed by | Olatunde Osunsanmi |
Starring |
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Music by | Jeff Russo |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Production location | Toronto, Canada |
Cinematography | Glen Keenan |
Production companies | |
Original release | |
Network | Paramount+ |
Related | |
Star Trek: Section 31 is an upcoming American science fiction television film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and written by Craig Sweeny for the streaming service Paramount+. It is intended to be the first television film, and the fourteenth film overall, in the Star Trek franchise and part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe. A spin-off from the series Star Trek: Discovery , the film is set in the franchise's "lost era" between the Star Trek: The Original Series films and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation . It follows Philippa Georgiou as she works with Section 31, a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past.
Michelle Yeoh stars as Georgiou, reprising her role from Discovery. Development on a spin-off television series with Yeoh was confirmed in January 2019, but filming was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. A different Discovery spin-off series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , was then prioritized. Section 31 was redeveloped into a film, which was announced in April 2023. Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humberly Gonzalez, and James Hiroyuki Liao also star in the film, which is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Filming took place in Toronto, Canada, from January to March 2024.
Star Trek: Section 31 is scheduled to be released on the streaming service Paramount+ on January 24, 2025.
Emperor Philippa Georgiou joins Section 31, a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, and must face the sins of her past. [1]
During production on the first season of Star Trek: Discovery , special guest star Michelle Yeoh suggested to executive producer Alex Kurtzman that they make a spin-off series featuring her character Philippa Georgiou. [12] Yeoh made the suggestion because she loved playing the character, and because she wanted to be a role model for young Asian women. Kurtzman was enthusiastic about the idea, but was unsure if a spin-off would be feasible since Discovery had not yet been released. After Yeoh's performance received positive responses, the writers of Discovery began exploring the black ops division Section 31 as part of her storyline in the second season. That led to further discussions about a potential spin-off series. [13] In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of Discovery, Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. [14] Yeoh was in talks to star in a spin-off series by November, which was expected to follow her character's Section 31 storyline. [2]
The streaming service CBS All Access confirmed it was moving ahead with development on the spin-off in January 2019, with Discovery writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt set as writers and showrunners. [15] Kurtzman said the project was intended to be an ongoing series rather than a limited miniseries, [12] and added that Kim and Lippoldt had begun writing while still working on the second season of Discovery. It was his hope that the new series would be ready to begin production once the third season of Discovery was completed. [16] [17] In March 2019, CBS Television Studios president David Stapf said the spin-off would be produced in Toronto, Canada, like Discovery, but it was "a good couple of years away", [18] with Kurtzman expecting it to be released in 2021 or 2022. [17] Yeoh confirmed that she was working on the series the next month. [3] Kurtzman said Discovery's writers were aware that their portrayal of Section 31 was inconsistent with the organization's introduction in the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the spin-off would show its evolution from their version to its original depiction, specifically why it becomes an "underground organization". [19] Kurtzman cited Killing Eve and the Mission: Impossible franchise as influences and said Georgiou would be "a protagonist who's entirely unreliable. At the end of the day, she's going to do the right thing, but in the exact wrong way." [20] In July, Shazad Latif indicated that he could be reprising his Discovery role of Ash Tyler in the spin-off. [21] A writers' room had been established by the end of November, and Kurtzman said the completed pilot script "occupies an area of the Trek universe that's never really been explored geographically. It has a new mythology to it". He also compared the series to the film Unforgiven (1992). [22]
By the end of January 2020, the series was set to be filmed from May to November 2020, [23] in the newly opened CBS Stages Canada in Mississauga, near Toronto. [24] [25] In February 2020, the series was reportedly renewed for a second season to allow the first two seasons to be filmed back-to-back. [26] Production on the third season of Discovery was completed that month, but filming on the spin-off was delayed by Yeoh's commitment to the film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) which was set to be filmed from January to May. [24] [25] Plans to instead begin filming the spin-off series in May were soon delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, [25] [27] with Kurtzman later stating that their plans for the series had been "thrown completely into whack" by the pandemic. [28] By August 2020, Kim and Lippoldt were working with Discovery writer Craig Sweeny to build the series; Sweeny previously served as showrunner on the Kurtzman-produced series Limitless . [13] Kurtzman said the writers had been able to "get quite ahead in scripts" due to the production delays. [29] A month later, frequent Star Trek director Jonathan Frakes said Kim and Lippoldt were optimistic that the series would be made despite work starting on a different Discovery spin-off series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Frakes had asked to direct Section 31's pilot episode but said a female director would likely be hired since the series was primarily a "woman's story". [30] In March 2021, ViacomCBS announced that CBS All Access would be expanded and rebranded as Paramount+. [31]
The third season of Discovery writes out Georgiou in the two-part episode "Terra Firma", released in December 2020, which was co-written by Kim and Lipoldt. They said the character's storyline for the season was developed with "a lot of care", and it ends with her being transported to an unknown place and time where the spin-off is set. [5] Yeoh said she hoped work on the spin-off could continue "very soon". [4] In February 2021, Kurtzman said there was still conversations taking place about making the series, [32] and he was optimistic about it eventually happening due to the already completed scripts. [28] However, he said the spin-off was unlikely to be added to Paramount+'s slate of Star Trek Universe series until one of the existing five series came to an end. [32] In February 2022, Kurtzman said the Section 31 spin-off was still in development and his team were planning Star Trek series that would be released two or three years later. [33] The series was expected to get a pickup from Paramount+ soon after. [34] In May, Kurtzman said he and his team were focusing on developing Section 31 and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy as the next two Star Trek series. [35] No further announcements had been made by January 2023, when Paramount Streaming's chief programming officer Tanya Giles said the spin-off was still in development. [36]
In March 2023, after revealing that Discovery would be ending with its fifth season, Kurtzman expressed interest in making more limited event series and television films for the Star Trek franchise rather than just traditional ongoing television series. He reiterated that the project was still in development. [37] A month later, Paramount+ announced that Star Trek: Section 31 was moving forward as a streaming "event film" instead of a series. Yeoh was attached to reprise her role in the film, which was written by Sweeny and set to be directed by Discovery executive producer Olatunde Osunsanmi. [1] The film was described as "Mission: Impossible meets Guardians of the Galaxy ". Kurtzman had begun converting the project from a series to a film in mid-2022, after realizing that Yeoh could win an Academy Award for her role in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and her schedule would likely get much busier. He and other executives had already been interested in expanding the franchise to event projects and were concerned about oversaturating the franchise with too many ongoing television series. [38]
Production was initially expected to begin in late 2023, [1] reportedly in October, [39] before it was delayed by the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes. [40] In May 2023, Latif said he had not heard if he would be involved in the film but expressed interest in reprising his role. [41] In mid-October, after the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike ended, Kurtzman said work on the film was underway again. [40] He announced the start of filming in January 2024, when additional cast members were revealed: Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humberly Gonzalez, and James Hiroyuki Liao. [11] Rohl plays a young version of Rachel Garrett, [9] who was portrayed by Tricia O'Neil in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" where she is the captain of the USS Enterprise-C. [42] Sweeny said viewers would not need to recognize Garrett to enjoy the film as he wanted a "low barrier of entry" for new fans. [9] Osunsanmi said the film's supporting characters had changed from when the project was planned to be a television series, and those rewrites were why Latif was no longer reprising his role. Latif's involvement in the series would have been related to the Temporal Wars from Star Trek: Enterprise . [43] Joe Pingue, Miku Martineau, and Augusto Bitter were also cast in the film. [44]
The film is set in the franchise's "lost era" between the Star Trek: The Original Series films and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation . Osunsanmi said this setting gave them some freedom, but they still had to ensure that the technology and other aspects of the setting were appropriate for the time period. [43] Discussing concerns about making a film focused on Section 31, Sweeny acknowledged that the idea was "almost antagonistic to some of the values of Star Trek" but felt there was room in Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's vision for people who do not want to work together on the bridge of a Starfleet ship. [9] Osunsanmi said they "worked really hard to make sure we kept up the ideals of optimism and kept up the ideals of what do we want our society to be in the future". He compared Section 31 to the CIA and secretive government agencies focused on UFOs. [43]
Filming began at Pinewood Toronto Studios in Toronto, Canada, on January 29, 2024, [45] [11] under the working title Dovercourt. [39] Pinewood Toronto Studios is where Discovery was produced, [45] and sets from that series were repurposed for the film. [9] Filming for Section 31 took place concurrently with production on the third season of Strange New Worlds at nearby CBS Stages Canada, and the two productions shared use of visual effects company Pixomondo's Toronto video wall stage for virtual production. [45] Glen Keenan returned from Discovery and Strange New Worlds as cinematographer for the film. [11] [ better source needed ]
Osunsanmi said he pushed the crew harder than he would when directing an episode of a television series because the whole project was over within a few months rather than the extended "marathon" schedule of a season of television. He said "we got to push everything to the extreme... emotion, performances, action, you name it". Osunsanmi was also able to breakdown the entire script and map out how he wanted to "tie everything together by the end". He chose to reconsider his creative and visual approach so it would be "new and fresh" rather than approaching the film in the same way that he had episodes of Discovery. He noted that Kurtzman wanted each Star Trek project to have its own "flavor". [43] Production on Section 31 was expected to take six weeks, ending on March 13; [45] Kazinsky announced the end of filming on March 21. [44]
The final cut of the film was locked by mid-October 2024, with a runtime of just under two hours. Additional dialogue recording (ADR), visual effects, and color grading were underway at that time. [43]
In January 2020, Discovery composer Jeff Russo expressed interest in also composing the score for Section 31, but said that may not be possible due to his workload and the large number of Star Trek series being produced around the same time. He suggested that he could oversee other composers for Section 31 and other series if Kurtzman asked him to. [46] Russo was confirmed to be composing the film's score in July 2024. [47]
Kurtzman, Osunsanmi, Hardwick, Richardson, and Rohl promoted the film during a "Star Trek Universe" panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024. A teaser trailer was shown during the event, introduced by Yeoh via a video message. It was also released online. James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporter said the teaser had a "rebellious tone" for the franchise, beginning with a warning from Starfleet about "misfit content", using a different style of title graphics from previous Star Trek projects, highlighting Georgiou's history of murder and calling her a "bad bitch", and being set to the contemporary song "Formation" by Beyoncé. [7] Christian Blauvelt of IndieWire and James Whitbrook of Gizmodo both noted the different tone from previous Star Trek projects, with Blauvelt calling it "a vibe like we've never gotten from Star Trek" and highlighting the use of the term "bad bitch". [48] [49] Michael Walsh at Nerdist said the teaser was "incredibly fun", [50] while Mick Joest at CinemaBlend praised the action and cast. He questioned why a Star Trek film starring Yeoh was not receiving a theatrical release. [51] Molly Templeton of Reactor was baffled by the trailer's "wacky" tone and "out-of-place Beyoncé track". She hoped the young Georgiou scenes did not mean the film would be an origin story, and also hoped it did right by its supporting cast. [52] The film was promoted by Hardwick, Rohl, Kazinsky, and Osunsanmi during another "Star Trek Universe" panel at New York Comic Con in October. The release date was announced and Yeoh again appeared via video message. [53]
Star Trek: Section 31 is scheduled to be released on the streaming service Paramount+ on January 24, 2025, in the United States and all other countries where the service is available. [53]
A one-shot comic book featuring Georgiou and also titled Star Trek: Section 31 is set to be released by IDW Publishing on February 5, 2025. It is written by Alyssa Wong with art by Megan Levans. [54]
In March 2024, Yeoh said she was open to making a sequel if the first film was successful. [9] In October, Osunsanmi said "the door is wide open" for additional Section 31 stories to be told after the film's release. [43]
Section 31, in the fictional universe of Star Trek, is an autonomous intelligence and defense organization that carries out covert operations for the United Federation of Planets. Created by Ira Steven Behr for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Inquisition", the organization was intended to act as a counterbalance to the utopian portrayal of the Federation.
Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the series of the same name and became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
Star Trek: Discovery is an American science fiction television series created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access. It is the seventh Star Trek series and was released from 2017 to 2024. The series follows the crew of the starship Discovery beginning a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series in the 23rd century. At the end of the second season, they travel to the 32nd century which is the setting for subsequent seasons.
"The Vulcan Hello" is the series premiere of the American television series Star Trek: Discovery, which is set roughly a decade before the events of the original Star Trek series and shows the beginnings of the Federation–Klingon cold war. It was written by Akiva Goldsman and Bryan Fuller, from a story by series creators Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, and was directed by David Semel.
Philippa Georgiou is a fictional character appearing in the Star Trek franchise portrayed by Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh. First appearing in "The Vulcan Hello", the pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Yeoh features as a major member of the recurring cast during the first three seasons of the series, and is credited in the main titles as a "special guest star" during each of the episodes she appears in. The character is introduced as the respected captain of the USS Shenzhou and a maternal figure to series protagonist Michael Burnham. Beginning in "The Wolf Inside", the eleventh episode of the show's first season, Yeoh portrays an alternate version of Georgiou from the Mirror Universe, a despotic and ruthless emperor of the Terran Empire. The character makes her final appearance in "Terra Firma", the two-part ninth and tenth episodes of Discovery season three.
The first season of the American television series Star Trek: Discovery is set a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series in the 23rd century and follows the crew of the starship Discovery during the Federation–Klingon war. The season was produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Secret Hideout, Roddenberry Entertainment, and Living Dead Guy Productions, with Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts serving as showrunners, and Akiva Goldsman providing producing support.
The second season of the American television series Star Trek: Discovery is set a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series in the 23rd century and follows the crew of the starship Discovery. With the crew of the USS Enterprise they investigate seven signals that were sent by a time traveler to prevent a rogue artificial intelligence from destroying all sentient life. The season was produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Alex Kurtzman serving as showrunner.
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Star Trek 4 is the working title of an American science fiction film in development at Paramount Pictures based on the television series Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry. It is intended to be the 15th feature film in the Star Trek film franchise and the 5th of the franchise's reboot films. There have been several different iterations of the film in development since 2015.
Star Trek: Prodigy is an American animated science fiction television series created by Kevin and Dan Hageman. It is the tenth Star Trek series and debuted in 2021 as part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe. Prodigy is the first Star Trek series to specifically target a younger audience, and the franchise's first solely 3D animated series. It follows a group of young aliens in the 24th century who find the abandoned starship Protostar and learn about Starfleet.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is an American science fiction television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet for the streaming service Paramount+. It is the 11th Star Trek series and debuted in 2022 as part of Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe. A spin-off from Star Trek: Discovery, it follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the starship Enterprise in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds and carry out missions throughout the galaxy during the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is an upcoming American television series created by Gaia Violo for the streaming service Paramount+. It is intended to be the 12th Star Trek series and part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's expanded Star Trek Universe. Set in the 32nd century, it follows the first new class of Starfleet cadets in over a century as they come of age and train to be officers.
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