Progress on 2023’s announced Star Trek sequel film may be moving at a snail’s pace, but even though no scripts have made it to the Kelvin Timeline cast — expected to return for the for next year’s project — cast captain Chris Pine has a few new things to say about what kind of expectations need to be placed on Trek movie production moving forward.

The road back to the Kelvin Timeline has been a rocky one over the last six years, from the premature announcement of a fourth film in July 2016 to a number of fizzled-out projects in the years since, including films from Quentin Tarantino and Noah Hawley.

Pine has already shared in a number of recent interviews that he hasn’t seen any scripts for the supposedly-on-the-way movie — and that he was a surprised as the rest of his Enterprise crewmates to learn of the announcement in February — but he has met with Trek 2023 director Matt Shakman and the team at Paramount Pictures about the project.

Speaking with Deadline this week, Pine shared:

I met the director, Matt [Shakman], who I really like. I met a producer on it that I really like. I know JJ [Abrams] is involved in it in some respects. I met the new people over at Paramount, which is many different kind of relations.

I really liked them. Everybody seems excited about the prospect of it. There’s just simply no — I don’t have a tangible script to look at.

Pine himself walked away from the Star Trek universe in 2018 after salary negotiations on a then-proposed fourth Kelvin Timeline film fell apart, following claims that the studio wasn’t meeting previously-contracted pay requirements after Star Trek Beyond box office numbers came in much lower than expected.

The actor told Deadline that he thinks studio overreach is something that’s been a challenge to manage in the last few Star Trek outings, and that if the film franchise is to continue, it may not be such a bad idea to set sights on a somewhat lower target.

We always tried to get the huge international market [with ‘Star Trek.’] It was always about making the billion dollars. It was always this billion-dollar mark because Marvel was making a billion. Billion, billion, billion.

We struggled with it because ‘Star Trek,’ for whatever reason, its core audience is rabid. Like rabid, as you know. To get these people that are interested that maybe are ‘Star Wars’ fans or think ‘Star Trek’ is not cool or whatever, proven to be … we’ve definitely done a good job of it but not the billion-dollar kind of job that they want.

I’ve always thought that ‘Star Trek’ should operate in the zone that is smaller. You know, it’s not a Marvel appeal. It’s like, let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love ‘Star Trek.’ Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great.

But make it for a price and make it, so that if it makes a half-billion dollars, that’s really good.

He admits, though, that such a lower-level outing may not be as feasible in today’s theatrical marketplace as it has been in the past — after factoring in all the costs associated with marketing, distribution, and other elements of film production.

[We] operate in a system now which I don’t know how much longer we have of you have to spend 500 million dollars on a film to reach… even you have to pay all sorts of people back.

So to make a billion… a billion is the gross. You haven’t brought your net in. [If] I had my business suit on, that’s what I would do, but I don’t know where that is. That’s all above my pay grade.

Pine’s comments are a familiar refrain to anyone who remembers the lackluster Star Trek Beyond marketing campaign, which failed to raise much outside-the-fanbase interest in that 2016 film — but as the actor notes, it may not be all that simple.

The currently-untitled 2023 Star Trek film is set to be directed by Matt Shakman, with Paramount Pictures intending to bring back Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and John Cho as Sulu.

Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the previous films, passed away in 2016 and his role is not expected to be recast.