Chris Pine is a certainly a very lucky man. He’s successfully taken the mantle of running the Enterprise as the new Captain Kirk, and he’s also taking over at the new Jack Ryan film, which he’s currently shooting with Kevin Costner.
This means that next year Pine will be starring in one of the biggest blockbusters of the summer, Star Trek 2, which hits theaters on May 17, 2013, and one of the biggest tentpoles of next Christmas. (Jack Ryan is due December 25, 2013).
Clearly, there’s a lot riding on the next Trek film. The first one reinvented the franchise and was a big hit for Paramount, and with the production company facing problems with a number of their current flicks, like G.I. Joe, World War Z and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they could really use a big hit blockbuster right now.
Of course there is a lot of pressure on JJ Abrams and company to deliver a movie as good, if not better, than the first Trek. As you may recall, the veteran genre director took his time before returning to Trek, and wanted to make sure the script was right before he committed. And to try and keep the experience as pure as possible for moviegoers, he’s also gone to great lengths to make sure there’s no early spoilers or leaks.
We still don’t know who the villain is, and even with Benedict Cumberbatch now doing interviews for a BBC series, Parade’s End, he still won’t reveal who the bad guy is, but he’s also tired of denying it’s Khan. Indeed, as cast member Bruce Greenwood recently told the L.A. Times, “We’ve all signed these releases that are as long as your leg,” not to give anything away.
Now as reported on Collider and Total Film, Pine talked a little about what we can expect with Trek 2, stressing that the next film won’t be like the Christopher Nolan Batmans, which were “like the original, only darker.” Pine continues that with the next Trek, “There’s comedy, which I think JJ does a great job of, but like the first one, there’s some serious issues being dealt with. And I’d say the threat is even greater in this one.”
Pine continued, “The force [the Enterprise crew] are met with is much more frightening. It’s relentlessly action-packed and in terms of character development it goes places you’d never expect. The arc is huge for all the characters. It’s a really big story – I can’t hype it enough!”
Actually, Pine forgot to mention Trek 2 is going tp be in 3D, and like Christopher Nolan pioneered with his Batman films, Abrams also shot parts of the film in IMAX. So in a little less than a year, the JJ Abrams model Star Trek will indeed be back in theaters, bigger than ever, and we’ll actually know who the villain is by then too.
