Honestly, it's frustrating for me that TV trek and the movies/reboot cannot be linked to each other, but a merger now might be too late and possibly mess up things. But then again, probably more for TV trek than feature films.
Paramount may be chill about these news for the most part, I don't think they are foundamental on whether we get more movies or not.
Funny enough, they are the ones that always had the gold mine but didn't make a good use of it.
The obvious exception of course being Zoe Saldana. Who is big in Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers and Avatar - but Avengers is already filmed, and with the clusterfuck surrounding the ousting of James Gunn, no one knows when GotG3 will start filming. And of course her role in "Avatar", which is much bigger than Trek, so Trek would have to eiter ditch Saldana (would be a shame, but in the grand scheme of things not hurt Trek as much as a TOS movie without Kirk), or work around the filming schedule and probably give her a reduced role or something.
I follow news about Zoe and I think her agent must be stressed ^ or maybe not.
She has already finished filming her scenes for the first two avatar sequels and they might not film the others for a while. These movies are the least of their concerns because they use motion capture and she thus isn't always asked to be on set. In fact, she did other things while she filmed her scenes in avatar.
The only conflict was gotg3 because, at first, rumor was that both gotg and trek wanted to start filming in january. They could find a way to make her do both (it happened already) but anyway, even before Gunn got fired, the studio had wanted to start filming gotg this september instead, thus making her more free to do other projects in early 2019.
Now, ironically, gotg3 isn't an issue but trek may get delayed too.
My concern is that the cast can't be left in a limbo and wait for trek to get an official date forever. They might be available now but get offered new roles in the meantime , including Pine.
Really, it's a tell for the gender imbalance in Hollywood that she is never going to earn as much money as Pine or Hemsworth for Trek - she is in bigger movies than them
If Zoe had cared about money too much, she wouldn't have a career now.
It's worse for her because she's a woman of color too so she probably gets even less because of that.
She's not the type to, now, shut up and accept Hollywood's crap but she also seems to be a realist who makes lemonade when life gives her lemons. Hollywood is problematic and deserves no excuse but some actors who are too picky should learn a thing or two from people like Zoe who had accepted small roles and little paycheck just to get the opportunity to work with actors they admired. Doesn't mean some things are fair, but change requires time that people who still need representation don't have.
Frankly, maybe paramount needs the two Chrises more than these two need trek..but still, they need trek and they generally need to work. For them, trek is an opportunity I wouldn't give up too easily, especially Pine. Hollywood's love isn't forever.
In terms of big names, the Chrises and Zoe may be the bigger stars they have and it's useful to have them compared to unknown faces, but I also think we are in a time where the popularity of actors isn't as foundamental as it maybe was decades ago. There aren't really any 'icons' here. You can win an Oscar and then not work for years.
People don't go watch movies just because a certain actor is on the poster. This includes Kirk and Thor too. These guys aren't THAT big. I think we need this Kirk by Pine, and this Uhura by Saldana etc etc more because the audience loves them in the roles already and they are these characters since years, than because the actors are big names and enough popular to make people watch the movies. And they, IMO, really don't need Thor. They want to bring Kirk's dad back only to have him in the movie and I get that, but at the same time I think believing he'll save this trek and make them get the numbers they want is disingenuos.
