Star Trek fans don’t have to worry about who will take the reins of the franchise’s latest TV series. CBS Television Studios announced Tuesday that it has named Bryan Fuller, a seasoned Star Trek writer and producer, to be showrunner, co-creator, and executive producer of the next chapter.
Fuller is a longtime fan of the 50-year-old franchise, and he even started off his writing career working on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Though he started as a freelance writer, he later earned roles as a staff writer and a co-producer. Not surprisingly, he has “encyclopedic knowledge of the Trek canon,” in the words of fellow executive producer Alex Kurtzman.
“My very first experience of Star Trek is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls,” said Fuller in a press release. “Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire. It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand-new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman, and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before.”
Fuller has also worked as a writer and executive producer on the series Heroes and Hannibal, not to mention creating the likes of Dead Like Me, Waterfalls, and Pushing Daisies. While some of his series have been under-appreciated in terms of ratings (e.g. Pushing Daisies and Hannibal), he’s gained critical acclaim and has been in high demand. In addition to working on Star Trek, he’s also currently serving as executive producer on an adaptation of the novel American Gods for Starz.
Along with Fuller and Kurtzman, Star Trek will be executive produced by Heather Kadin. CBS Television Studios will produce in association with Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout. The highly anticipated series will debut in 2017, with all first-run episodes being made available to U.S. viewers exclusively on CBS All Access.
