Thursday, May 04, 2006

J.J. Abrams helming Star Trek XI

by jaydro
This is probably old news to some people, but I just heard last night that M:I3/Lost/Alias dude J. J. Abrams has been announced as the director/writer/producer of the Star Trek XI movie, to be about Kirk and Spock's early days. A similar concept had been kicked around about fifteen or more years ago for a movie or TV series.

Looking up his résumé, I realized I had forgotten that Abrams had done Joy Ride. I've never watched Alias, and Lost isn't enough to make me excited that he's done M:I3, but that's probably M:I2's fault more than Lost.

I hate to admit that lately I've been enjoying G4's airing of Star Trek 2.0, wherein the original series is screened with a wide frame containing silly things like counters for drinking-game events, "Spock Market" stock values, and live chat, but I watch it at single-arrow fast-forward on TiVo just to read the trivia banner crawl. It's no great shakes, but they're pointing out lots of tidbits that I surprisingly didn't know. And of course I watch their promo ads with the animated action figures--they really crack me up. (Confession: Star Trek 2.0's trivia crawl is where I first heard the J. J. Abrams news.)

4 Comments:

Blogger Jackrabbit Slim said...

Abrams has thrown some water on this story, although the essence of it appears to be true. The following is from Zap2It:

Maybe the fanboys and Hollywood trades were a little fast to jump on the J.J. Abrams-Starfleet Academy "Star Trek" rumors.

Last week ending with great jubilation in the "Star Trek" universe as Variety announced that "Alias" and "Lost" guru J.J. Abrams would produce and possibly direct the next "Star Trek" film and that the plot would revolve around Young Kirk and Young Spock in their earliest days as friends and colleagues.

Just hold your horses, partners.

In an interview with England's Empire magazine, Abrams said that what you've heard may not actually be entirely accurate. Then, like an "Alias" cliffhanger or an unresolved "Lost" mystery, he didn't say much else to clarify.

"The whole thing was reported entirely without our cooperation," Abrams told Empire. "People learned that I was producing a 'Star Trek' film, that I had an option to direct it, they hear rumors of what the thing was going to be and ran with a story that is not entirely accurate."

It's at this point, that you'd think Abrams, promoting his feature directing debut "Mission: Impossible III," would want to set the record straight. He doesn't.

"We've made a pact not to discuss any specifics," is the only other enlightening statement reported in Empire.

Otherwise, the biggest scoop is that Abrams likes the characters in the universe saying, "Those characters are so spectacular. I just think that... you know, they could live again."

Yup. That's pretty meaningless. But we thought you'd like to know.

5/04/2006 01:43:00 PM  
Blogger jaydro said...

So who would make a good young Kirk and Spock? (I got so caught up in tracking down those 2.0 promo clips that I forgot one of the points I meant to make in my post.)

If you watch Down With Love as many times as I have you start to see Ewan McGregor as a definite Kirk possibility, but he's too old to play Kirk at the Academy.

Josh Hartnett could pull off Mr. Spock. I've frequently thought of putting up a website of actors who could play Vulcans, but I have yet to do it.....

5/04/2006 03:30:00 PM  
Blogger jaydro said...

Good Spock picks. I can't buy Heath Ledger as Kirk, and I mentally pooh-poohed Joseph Gordon-Levitt as I read your post, but looking at his IMDB photo, I can see it. Hmmmm.

(BTW, if anyone cares: I figured out my previous link creation problem--I was sloppily leaving off the double quotes around the URL, which works in the preview and works when published if the link doesn't end in a slash, but screws things up otherwise.)

5/04/2006 04:47:00 PM  
Blogger Joe said...

Abrams did Joy Ride? *yawn*

He's gold on tv, but the jury is out on film.

5/05/2006 10:30:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home