Will believe it when I see it at this point but clearly Paramount has been forced to abandon the Abrams cast sequel. It's just not happening right now. Paramount screwed that up at every angle.
I'm really confused why they made all those announcements and failed to deliver on every single one. This all fell apart post-Beyond because they didn't want to pay some of the cast members what they already agreed to. And then they announced the sequel again when none of the cast members were signed to new deals, which was a huge gamble that didn't pay off at all.
Now, what it means to abandon the Abrams cast at least means they can start fresh with a new cast and they'd be a lot cheaper to start out.
I'm still disappointed with the Abrams films. They successfully relaunched the franchise and were riding tons of momentum and goodwill. Then they totally squandered it.
Then they had the 50th anniversary for Beyond and they did nothing to capitalize on it at all. The marketing for Beyond was awful. Absolutely awful.