It’s been a hell of a summer for JJ Abrams and company with the success of Super 8 and Cowboys & Aliens, which was co-written by frequent Abrams collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
With Team Abrams doing bang up business this season, the question on many people’s minds is what’s going on with the next Star Trek, which Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci rebooted with great success in 2009.
Many would have thought there’d already be another Star Trek movie by now, or at least one in production by now and many were wondering what’s been the holdup.
Several months ago it was revealed on Deadline and Trekmovie that there still wasn’t a script, but a 70 page outline, and everyone was waiting for Abrams to confirm he’d be on board to direct the next Trek.
Now Abrams has told the L.A. Times the project is “making the kind of headway that frankly I wish we were able to make months ago.”
Everyone on the Trek team has been busy with other projects, Abrams especially with Super 8 and his new series Alcatraz. Paramount was hoping the movie would be ready for release by next July, but it’s been pushed back, with the second G.I. Joe taking its place, on July 29, 2012.
As Abrams continued, yes the studio would like it shooting by now, but at the same time, “Nothing is more disheartening than something going in front of the camera before it’s ready. The crew can feel it and the cast can feel it. It’s just a heart-attack machine.”
Now according to to Indiewire, the current plan is starting in January 2012, with hopes of a release late that year, but summer 2013 is looking more realistic.
Funny enough, the site Vulture also reported Paramount has talked to Abrams about making the next Star Trek in 3D, and the third Star Trek, The Search For Spock, was going to be in 3D as well. Paramount helped lead the eighties 3D revival with the third Friday the 13th, but the technology was pretty much played out by Summer ’83. (And will probably be long played out by the time the next Star Trek is ready.)
As Abrams told Vulture, “I have nothing against 3D in theory. But I’ve also never run to the movies because something’s in 3D…You know, when I was in New York fifteen years ago, I sort of had the flu, I remember turning the TV on. There were these kids in a very dark, kind of muddy movie that was on a local channel…somebody had a paddleball, and they were doing it right to the camera. It was like this weird experimental Fellini movie. I was like, ‘What the f*ck is this movie?’ And it was Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D – without sex, violence, or 3DD! It was genius.”
