{"id":504956,"date":"2026-03-31T09:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504956\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:44:11","slug":"project-hail-mary-writer-slams-new-star-trek-apologizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504956\/","title":{"rendered":"PROJECT HAIL MARY Writer Slams New STAR TREK, Apologizes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest hit of 2026 so far at the movies is Project Hail Mary. The Ryan Gosling sci-fi film has become beloved by both audiences and critics alike<\/a>, a rare feat these days. The film is based on the 2021 science fiction novel of the same name by author Andy Weir. His first novel, The Martian, became a huge hit when directed by Ridley Scott in 2015. With only four novels to his name, and half of them becoming hit films, Weir has become a hot commodity. But in doing press for Project Hail Mary, he recently slammed most modern versions of another beloved sci-fi property: Star Trek.<\/p>\n

\"TheParamount+ <\/p>\n

Via Gizmodo<\/a>, we learned that while a guest on The Critical Drinker podcast, Weir vented his feelings about modern Trek. Podcast host Will Jordan, whose primary angle centers on decrying how all the franchises of his youth have become \u201ctoo woke now\u201d, suggested that all modern Star Trek become de-canonized. In response, here\u2019s what Andy Weir had to say on the subject:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re a little more severe than I am\u2014I\u2019ll give you my opinion, and I\u2019m just a consumer. I like\u00a0Strange New Worlds<\/a>. I think it\u2019s pretty good. I didn\u2019t hate\u00a0Enterprise. I thought it was kind of weird.\u00a0Lower Decks, I thought, was entertaining and fun. All the others, they can go. And here\u2019s another thing: I pitched a\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0show to Paramount, and I was in a Zoom with the showrunners of all the shows and spent a lot of time talking to [executive producer Alex Kurtzman]. I don\u2019t like a lot of the new\u00a0Trek. He, as a person, is a really nice guy. But at the same time, those shows are shit. He is a nice guy. But they didn\u2019t accept my pitch, so, you know, f*** \u2019em.<\/p>\n

Weir\u2019s comments quickly blew up on social media, leading to the author apologizing publicly to Alex Kurtzman on Facebook. You can see Weir\u2019s post below:<\/p>\n

In this post, Weir said, \u201cI was trying to be funny, but in retrospect it comes off as disrespectful and mean.\u201d He added that he regretted his quotes had become \u201csalacious sound bytes.\u201d He finished by saying to Kurtzman, \u201cAnyway, if you want to talk about it in real time \u2013 even if it\u2019s just to rip me a new one \u2013 I\u2019m happy to hop on the phone or Zoom.\u201d Given that people these days usually just double down, it is nice to see Weir be a grown-up about this.<\/p>\n

Having said that, we can see why Paramount rejected his Star Trek pitch. In a different interview, Weir said, \u201cAs a lifelong\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0fan, it\u2019s always bothered me that there is a presumed \u2018responsibility\u2019 within\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0shows to talk about social issues. I just want to watch Romulans and the Federation shoot at each other.\u201d Whether you like modern Trek or not, discussing social issues allegorically is baked into\u00a0Star Trek\u2019s DNA since 1966<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to imagine a version of Trek that isn\u2019t that. If you can\u2019t recognize that, and just want \u201cpew-pew-pew\u201d in space, there are plenty of sci-fi options to choose from. Either just to watch, or to create for. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest hit of 2026 so far at the movies is Project Hail Mary. The Ryan Gosling sci-fi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-504956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}