Starfleet Academy show starts production, with approval from Elon Musk

There have been a lot of new Star Trek shows produced over the past several years, from Discovery to Picard to Strange New Worlds to Lower Decks, all of them living on Paramount+. And the most ambitious one may still be ahead: Starfleet Academy is about a new group of cadets learning what it means to be a leader on the final frontier. Production has officially started. Check out the assembled cast below:

The cast is part of the reason I describe this show as ambitious. The new recruits will be played by the likes of Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, Karim Diané, Zoë Steiner, and Sandro Rosta, who are mostly unknown to the wider public. But the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy will be played by Oscar winner Holly Hunter, probably best known these days as the voice of Elastigirl in The Incredibles movies. If you want to see what she can do in live-action, check out movies like The Piano, Raising Arizona or Broadcast News. She brings some serious acting firepower to the show.

What's more, Paul Giamatti will play a villain! Sure, he didn't actually win an Oscar, but being nominated twice (for Cinderalla Man and The Holdovers) is still pretty good. Starfleet Academy will also feature appearances from Star Trek veterans like Tig Notaro, Oded Fehr and Mary Wiseman, all from Star Trek: Discovery; as well as Robert Picardo, from Star Trek: Voyager. We've also heard tell of Paramount+ building enormous sets for the show. They're going big with this one!

Elon Musk wants to make a real-life Starfleet Academy

Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau will serve as co-showrunners on Starfleet Discovery. There's no release date, but one person we're going to bet will be watching whenever the show premieres is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/X, and more, and the richest person in the world depending on when you check. The day production went live on Starfleet Academy, Musk tweeted simply: "Let's make Starfleet Academy real!"

Elon Musk has a well-documented fixation on colonizing Mars, so it's not surprising that he'd be interested in creating a real-life school where people are trained to explore space. In fact, tech moguls being inspired by sci-fi in general and Star Trek in particular is so common it's basically a cliche.

But hey, ideas have to come from somewhere, so why not from Star Trek? We'll look out for news of a release date for Starfleet Academy and/or Elon Musk's interplanetary exploration school.

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