Turns out, Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir isn’t just a science nerd who writes about space adventures. He’s a longtime Star Trek fan—the kind who knows the difference between Romulans and Vulcans. His alien character Rocky even comes from the same solar system as Spock. So when he got the chance to pitch his own Star Trek show to Paramount, it probably felt like a dream come true. Unfortunately for him, the studio shut it down faster than a redshirt on a landing party.
Weir told this story on a podcast hosted by YouTuber Will “Critical Drinker” Jordan, and things got spicy fast. Weir admitted, “I don’t like a lot of the new ‘Trek.’” Then, with the kind of bluntness that would make Scotty blush, he added that “those shows are s**t.” Jordan agreed and took it a step further, saying Paramount should “kill all of the modern Star Trek and decanonize all of it… Everything from Enterprise onwards.”
This is why Andy Weir will always be one of my favorite authors. His goal is to entertain, not lecture. pic.twitter.com/5KmvOvf8c4
— Lily* (@300mirrors) March 24, 2026
You can watch the full interview here.
To his credit, Weir didn’t go full phaser blast on the franchise. He pushed back slightly, saying, “You’re a little more severe than I am … I like Strange New Worlds, I think it’s pretty good … I didn’t hate Enterprise. I thought it was kind of weird … Lower Decks I thought was entertaining and fun. All the others, they can go.” That “all the others” list is long: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and the short-lived Starfleet Academy, which is already being mothballed after two seasons of classroom melodrama.
Weir made another observation that cuts to the heart of why so many of today’s big franchises feel like corporate soup. As much as he’d love to work on Star Trek, he admitted there’s a price for joining a legacy brand. “For the major properties like Star Trek, Star Wars, you’re always going to get studio interference,” he said. “One thing that I have to say on Project Hail Mary… Amazon is new to the [movie production] game… they gave us notes on the cuts and stuff like that, but they weren’t up in our faces pushing us around. And you know that’s happening in the Star Wars films and stuff like that.” In other words, imagine how much better your favorite franchises might be if the studios just let creative people actually create.
Weir credited the success of Project Hail Mary to that kind of freedom, pointing out that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were allowed to direct without a corporate committee hovering over them. That may explain why while Star Trek fights to keep relevance across five different spin-offs, Project Hail Mary managed to win hearts with a single film. Paramount tried to build a galaxy’s worth of shows all at once—Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and Prodigy—and ended up stretching the brand thinner than a Ferengi’s moral compass.
The comments drew the ire of Don Winslow, writer of the quickly fading Crime 101 movie.
This is some sanctimonious bullshit. What are you, the fucking writer sheriff?
— Juan Carlos Coto (@brasstab) March 30, 2026
Writers stand up for free expression, and @andyweirauthor is entitled to his opinion, as are you. I simply disagree with the fact that you seem to have the anointed yourself hall monitor.
— Juan Carlos Coto (@brasstab) March 30, 2026
Now it looks like the warp core’s cooling. The current seasons of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy are wrapping up, and there’s nothing new in the Star Trek pipeline right now. Maybe the studio finally realized that endless content isn’t the same as good content. Or maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember that fans prefer stories driven by imagination, not corporate memos.
As for Weir, he later posted a mild apology to producer Alex Kurtzman on Facebook (embedded above), saying his comments might’ve sounded rougher than intended. It came off like someone trying to smooth things over without actually taking anything back. And who can blame him? In Hollywood, a little contrition keeps the doors open, but he didn’t retract his main point—and thank goodness for that. The interview was a rare breath of honesty in a galaxy full of corporate spin. Let’s hope Weir gets another shot at Star Trek before Paramount buries what’s left of it under another committee-approved reboot.
English (US) · 