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Michelle Yeoh in Talks with CBS for Standalone Trek Series

According to an article in Deadline, Michelle Yeoh is currently in talks to reprise her Star Trek Discovery role of Captain Emperor Georgiou for a stand-alone CBS All Access series. She is already set to return to Discovery as the Mirror Universe version of Captain Philippa Georgiou. The series is still in the planning stages, but the spinoff is likely to center around her character’s adventures in Starfleet’s Section 31 division. The semi-secret and autonomous organization has been a part of Trek lore since it was first introduced in the 1990s on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series.

The first revealed casting of the Discovery series, the recruitment of Yeoh’s Georgiou into Section 31 is a storyline for the January 17-debuting Season 2 of Discovery that she teased online when she appeared at New York Comic-Con in October:

Yeoh is also in talks for a not-yet-greenlit sequel to Crazy Rich Asians. Between that and the new production office she’s formed with SK Global Entertainment, she’s likely to be pretty busy, so it’s not clear exactly how she’d be able to handle a series lead on top of that.

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery will make its debut in February of 2019, but unlike last year, it will likely not be available on Netflix internationally, since this close to the release date neither Netflix nor CBS has announced that the streaming giant will be carrying it. The Georgiou series would make the fourth Trek series on CBS All Access, joining the already announced half-hour adult animated comedy series Star Trek: Below Decks and the already airing Star Trek: Short Treks.

The series is one of several ideas being pursued by Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout and David Stapf’s CBS TV Studios for the multi-project, multi-year Trekverse expansion. They’re trying to get CBS All Access to the point where there’s always some kind of new Star Trek to see on it.

This is especially important since projections of reaching its goal of 8 million subscribers by 2020 is looking increasingly unlikely. In September of 2017 CBS All Access estimates had them at almost 3 million subscribers. That turned out to be rather generous; a new report, published by CBS itself during the 2018 TCA summer press tour, says that as of August 2018 they had only 2.5 million, with an average age of 43. The new goal is to hit that number by 2022, which means CBS All Access has now moved the goalposts.

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