William Shatner addresses Kirk return rumors: "I would never want to bring him back simply for the sake of bringing him back."

William Shatner issued a public statement on social media earlier today aimed at quieting speculation that the Star Trek team has been trying (and failing) to develop a way to bring James T. Kirk back to the screen. 

Posted to Instagram on Friday, September 25, 2026, the statement opens with Shatner saying he wants to head off the rumor mill before it starts producing even more fiction than Star Trek ever did. He lays out the one condition under which he'd reprise the role: if someone came up with a meaningful way to bring Kirk back to life, and gave him something genuinely interesting to do that added to the beauty and spirit of Star Trek. Then, and only then, he would be delighted to consider it.

“In order to put a stop to the rumor mill before it starts producing even more fiction than Star Trek ever did, let me say this,” Shatner wrote in the statement. “If someone came up with a meaningful way to bring Captain Kirk back to life, and gave him something genuinely interesting to do that added to the beauty and spirit of Star Trek, I would be delighted to consider it.”

“But that has never come up,” he continued. “I love Star Trek just as much as all of you folks do. Kirk has been an extraordinary part of my life, and I would never want to bring him back simply for the sake of bringing him back. So, until someone comes knocking with an idea worthy of Kirk... I wait. For them. Or for eternity.”

The statement responds to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman, who confirmed this week, in an interview with TrekMovie, that the series spent its entire run chasing Shatner. Myers said the effort began in season one and continued every season after. The pitch: a serious, animated episode revisiting "The City on the Edge of Forever," the 1967 episode widely regarded as the franchise's best, as a part-two rather than a remake. Shatner would have voiced a younger Kirk, in the Star Trek: The Animated Series style, opposite Paul Wesley's and Ethan Peck's versions of Kirk and Spock, in a story where this Kirk never leaves 1930s New York and stays with Edith Keeler (originally played by Joan Collins).

Notably, this wasn't a flat rejection. Per ScreenRant, Goldsman has said they got "close enough to Zoom with" Shatner, and that he "was game." What derailed it, in Goldsman's words, was that "the vagaries of the various sort of systems just... didn't align" — logistics and scheduling more than any veto from Shatner himself. Goldsman has called it his one real regret from the show's run.

That door has seemingly closed for good with the SNW season 4 finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise" (streaming since September 24), and the news that the series ends after a six-episode fifth season — the last series standing from the Kurtzman era, which winds down entirely as Kurtzman's deal with Paramount expires at year's end. (That being said, in today’s media landscape, this could be a misdirect for the show’s final season.)

Shatner's statement effectively closes that chapter from his side: whatever reached him, including the “City on the Edge of Forever” sequel, didn't clear the bar he set for himself back in early 2025 — a Kirk return "has to mean something. It has to be the show." According to Cosmic Book News, insiders reporting on the incoming Mike De Luca/Pam Abdy/David Ellison regime say the franchise's next chapter is being built around Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Next Generation — the shape a future Kirk pitch would likely have to take.

Maybe more details about how Shatner would like to return soon. The actor is booked for the Star Trek panel at New York Comic-Con on October 10, 2026, part of the franchise's 60th-anniversary programming.