It was rumored that Shatner might show up in last year’s Star Trek Beyond as a future version of Chris Pine’s Kirk, but that was later debunked.
As longtime Star Trek fans know, William Shatner’s iteration of James Kirk died while helping his fellow Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard stop Tolian Soran in 1994’s Star Trek Generations.
However, Shatner did get to cameo in a way in Beyond when Zachary Quinto’s Spock was looking through his future counterpart’s possessions and found a picture of the main Enterprise team from the original timeline in their older years.
Although he was brought back to life in the “Shatnerverse,” a series of non-canon Star Trek novels co-written by Shatner himself, Kirk Prime has remain deceased in the main continuity, which is why, as J.J. Abrams noted, it’s been extremely difficult to effectively feature him in these reboots.