The director of Michelle Yeoh's new Star Trek movie details how it's gone through "seven different iterations" over five years, with everything changing but two character names

Upcoming Star Trek movie Section 31 has been on quite the journey over the years. Spinning off from the trailblazing series Discovery, development began on Section 31 in 2017, with star Michelle Yeoh entering talks to reprise her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou a year later. The actor helms the new film, which sees Georgiou face the sins of her past upon joining a secret division of Starfleet.

Starting out life as a spin-off series, since work began on Section 31 it has gone through many, many changes – which naturally led to several delays. As director Olatunde Osunsanmi says in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features the film on the cover and hits newsstands on December 31, it's been a long journey with the result now being billed as the franchise's first ever "television event movie".

In fact, the alterations have been so significant the end result is completely different to the original pitch for the spin-off's pilot episode, with everything changing bar two character names.

As Osunsanmi explains: "I would say the only two things that are the same from the original series pilot to the movie that we've got now is that there is a character named Alok and Philippa Georgiou. It has been retooled so much, the two stories are completely unrecognizable, and Craig Sweeny, the writer, has been in the middle of that [for] the whole process."

Continuing, Osunsanmi details the extent of the changes, adding that they went through about seven different versions of what Section 31 would be. The filmmaker adds: "He's [Sweeny] been in a situation to have written – I think – seven different iterations of this. When I say seven different iterations, the first iteration was six episodes of the first season of Section 31. The second iteration was another five episodes of Section 31 which were completely different than the previous iteration. Then the fourth, fifth, and sixth were multiple pilots that were outlines, then we had the movie, and the movie itself went through a couple of iterations."

Naturally, all of the above led to both fans and those working on the project raising their eyebrows, concerned about the development of Section 31. However, Osunsanmi is keen to emphasize that he believes the end result is totally worth the difficult journey: "I think where we ended up was wonderful, because we never would have gotten here if it weren't for that journey. Sometimes you just got to go on the journey in order to arrive at the place that you arrive at."

We will find out soon ourselves if the long wait was worth it when Section 31 arrives on streaming service Paramount Plus.

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Star Trek: Section 31 releases via Paramount Plus on January 24. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features the new film as the cover and hits newsstands on December 31.