Hawley also recalls experiencing an all-too-common death knell for most creative projects at major film studios: a change in management. It’s common for entire projects to be shelved or canceled when a studio undergoes a regime change, as no new CEO wants to expend time or energy working on projects left over from the last CEO’s docket. It’s definitely significant that Viacom, which had previously seen its CBS and Paramount arms split apart, reunified in 2019.
For years, the TV arm of “Star Trek” and the movie arm of “Star Trek” were technically run by two different companies and any Treks put out by one arm had to remain legally distinct from Treks made by the other (hence the creation of an alternate timeline). After the re-merger, a fourth film in the Kelvin timeline seemed unnecessary, as all Treks were now back under the same umbrella. That management shift, Hawley noted, was certainly a factor in his own “Kelvin 4” film being nixed. He said:
“What I found with ‘Star Trek’ was I got onto the runway and then there was a managerial changeover. In retrospect, it’s not that they killed the movie. It’s that I got as far as I did with a wholly original idea, until someone said, ‘Well, wait a minute, what are we even doing with this valuable IP? Just giving it to him to make up a story? That’s not how corporate filmmaking works.’ So, if the call came in to do a big franchise film again, it would have to come with a sense of, ‘We want you to do your version of it.'”
The other all-too-familiar drum beat can be heard in Hawley’s comments. He and the studio had (in unison now) creative differences.