'Star Trek' 2016 CBS Series Finds New Showrunner: Hannibal Creator Bryan Fuller!

Star Trek: The Original Series is turning 50 years old in 2016, and the celebration is pretty big: not only is there a film coming out, Star Trek Beyond, but there's also a planned new CBS series to mark the anniversary. Now, even better, Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller, who's worked with the Enterprise franchise before, has joined the project as showrunner!

Almost 20 years ago, Fuller began his (so far brilliant) TV career writing two episodes of the 1997 show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, then doing work for Star Trek: Voyager -- and now he's coming back to the Starship Enterprise with this major new project!

According to Deadline, Fuller will be serving as co-creator as well as executive producer of the upcoming new take on the iconic 50-year-old franchise. Adorably enough, this is a lifelong dream for Fuller, who's said many times in the past that he'd love to helm his own Star Trek.

"Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire," Fuller said when announcing his involvement in the new show. "It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before."

Up until last year, Fuller was working on acclaimed series Hannibal, a prequel to the events from Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter trilogy, which includes the Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs.

Variety reports that, besides bringing back Fuller to the Trek franchise, the new show will also act as a test for CBS. The show, set for a January 2017 premiere, will have a preview broadcast on the network and then move towards its All Access digital subscription service, the company's foray into Netflix-like territory.

While the franchise began on television in 1966, the past few years have seen Trek focused on TV, ever since the 2009 reboot directed by J.J. Abrams. The 2017 show will be the first TV series since the 2001-2005 UPN series Star Trek: Enterprise.