Deadline Hollywood’s Mike Fleming just put words to the dread I've been harboring for a while now: We’re going to have to wait longer for the next “Star Trek.”
The recent interview in which Bob Orci revealed franchise mastermind J.J. Abrams -- highly distracted this past year with (among many other things) “Super 8” -- had not yet approved the 70-page outline Orci co-wrote?
That revelation almost seems to guarantee a new effects-swollen “Trek” will not be hitting cinemas in 13 months. Rather, Abrams will want to push Paramount's release date from June 2012 to at least December 2012.
Bruce Greenwood indicated last July that the plan was to start shooting in January 2011, which made perfect sense given the June 2012 release date. When February 2011 came and went without any “Trek” casting news, I suspect I wasn’t the only one who saw the Andorian alphabet on the wall.
The last “Star Trek” was long earmarked for Christmas 2008 – until it was bumped back to summer 2009.
As much as I'm jonesing for more Kirk and Spock, I can only root for another delay. Two years in, I do not want to find ourselves having waited three years for a shitty, slapdash “Search For Spock”-ish sequel. (I saw "Spock" this weekend on Syfy HD and could barely believe how much worse it was than I remembered.) I suspect most fans would far prefer to wait three and a half years – or even four years – rather than get a rushed entry unworthy of the 2009 installment.
My hope, in fact, is that Abrams does what I seem to remember John Lassiter did with “Toy Story 2”: jump into the script with both feet, tell the studio to go pee up a rope with their release dates, tear away the story components he had reservations about, and even start from scratch if he has to.
I don’t want to go back to only every other “Trek” movie being any good.
The good news is Deadline also reports that Abrams will “shortly” announce he will again climb into the director’s chair for the next Trek. (Given that Abrams continues to produce Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible” movies – but handed off the directorial reins of “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” to Brad Bird – suggested we could by no means take his directorial involvement for granted.)
Find all of Deadline’s story on the matter here.
