Star Trek: Starfleet Academy showrunner and executive producer Alex Kurtzman has confirmed that the first season of the all-new original series will comprise 10 episodes, with filming beginning this summer.
In a recent interview with Collider at SXSW, Kurtzman revealed that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is on target to start filming later this summer as the team has officially reached the "halfway" point in the writers' room. He warned fans, however, that they might not see the new Star Trek series beam onto Paramount+ for a while.
"It could end up not airing until 2026," Kurtzman said. "By starting [shooting in late summer], just building the sets alone is a massive endeavor, then six months of shooting, then six to eight months of post. If you recall, there was all this noise around Season 1 and Season 2 of Discovery because the streaming service, they were like, 'Oh, it's like a turnaround on a cop show.' I'm like, 'No, you don't understand. It's eight months of visual effects turnaround, and we're not gonna rush that.'"
Kurtzman asserted that the series will "come out" but only when it's ready, and he can't put a date on that yet because they haven't even "started casting the kids" who will appear as the new class of Starfleet cadets at the center of the story, though promises those characters will reinforce what fans love about Starfleet.
"There's a lot of different kids from a lot of different places," Kurtzman explained. "Some of them want to be there, some of them don't want to be there. It's gonna be a fundamental reinforcement of all the things we love about Starfleet, in general.
"You always want to ask yourself, 'Why this show now?'" he added. "I think that one of the big things that certainly my 17-year-old son is facing, which is kind of a fundamental 'Star Trek' question, is, 'How did we get here? How has this generation inherited the mistakes from previous generations? And what are we gonna do to fix it, to build that optimistic future that is Roddenberry's essential vision?' That is very much going to be at the heart of Starfleet Academy."
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy landed a series order from Paramount+ in March 2023, with Noga Landau joining Kurtzman as co-showrunner and executive producer on the show alongside fellow executive producers Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa, and John Weber.
Paramount+ already has an expansive lineup of original Star Trek series, including Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Star Trek: Discovery's final adventure will also premiere globally on April 4 with a two-episode debut, followed by new episodes each Thursday.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on X/Twitter @AdeleAnkers.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/star-trek-starfleet-academy-filming-10-episode-first-season-summer