Pegg Dispels Elba Klingon Rumors

simon-pegg

There has been quite a bit more news, and wild speculation, about the next Trek movie since Simon Pegg was given the helm. Last week, rumors began to circulate that Idris Elba, a British actor best known to sci-fi fans for his role in Pacific Rim, would play the film’s villain.

While many people were guessing (and/or hoping) that Elba would play a Klingon, Pegg confirmed in an interview with Absolute Radio, that Elba would not be a son of Kahless.

Note in the interview that Pegg dances around the question of Elba being in the movie at all – but on the subject of Klingons, he uses some pretty confident language.

AR: What about the rumors Idris Elba’s going to be a Klingon?

SP: That’s not true.

AR: Not at all?

SP: No, no, no.

I’m going to double down on Elba playing Dr. Richard Daystrom, creator of M-5 computer, especially given Pegg’s remarks that the new movie will be more in line with the spirit of the original series.

 

Daystrom

 

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Peggy lied about Khan being in the last movie. So, now we take him at his word?

Peggy? Boo-hah! That should be Pegg.

@1. Harry Ballz,

They were holding a gun to his head, don’t you know.

Fascinating

He is still growing the beans, so what is he supposed to spill? Kills me that they are still “plugging away” at a script that goes before the cameras in just over two months. I doubt we’re gonna get ‘The Ultimate Computer.’ That four-way split screen effect nearly bankrupt DesiLu back in the day.

“[Benedict Cumberbatch’s character is] not just another disgruntled alien. It’s a really interesting… sort of… thing. Obviously I can’t talk about it… It’s not Khan. That’s a myth. Everyone’s saying it is, but it’s not…”

—Mr. Simon Pulling-Your-Leg Pegg

@1. Harry Ballz

“Peggy lied about Khan being in the last movie.”

Peggy Olson? :)

Yes, Simon lied about Khan!

……….Soooo… Did Simon learned his lesson?

He’s an interesting actor, I wouldn’t mind seeing him play a Klingon or not. . But at the end of Pegg’s short Q&A Pegg says:

“SP: Idris… I heard there’s a rumor he’s been spoken to about stuff, so he may be in the film, but he won’t be a Klingon. [Laughs] Or maybe he will!”

So will he play a Klingon? In the best JJ tradition, it sounds like a definite, possible, maybe! :)

I hear it’s a remake of ‘Who Mourns for Adonais’ & Idris reprises Heimdall the Guardian of the Nick-frost, sorry Bifrost bridge who must stop the Enterprise crew entering Asgard and repeating their Greek God dismissal against Odin, Thor and the Nordic Gods

Can we get the Orci, Payne, McKay script back please?

This is exciting!

I wish the original writing team the best of luck in all of their future endeavors.
But,Paramount didn’t want that script.
So, i don’t want it back.

I am great you are great!

re: Daystrom. Stop trying to make fetch happen. :)

#11- No. Just…no.

And this whole Daystrom stuff? That’s just stupid. Pegg said they are going back to the spirit of the Original Series, not mining minor characters for further diminishing returns (unless Pegg is lying, of course).

Considering how many people want Idris to play James Bond (a black actor to play a white character), why not assume for now that Idris is being courted to play an original character of undetermined ethnicity/species?

The whole point of this rebooting nonsense was to tell original stories. Why don’t we hope for one now (third time’s the charm) instead of hoping for more rehashing?

I’m fining it refreshing that, as the writer, he’s seemingly more open to talking about the project. On the other hand, he also denied Cumberbatch was playing Khan, so a fast denial needs to be taken with a grain of salt…

Personally, I still hope they create and explore a new character. There is little reason to revisit old territory….

Why do we need to know every plot detail before the movie comes out? If you know exactly what’s going to happen then it takes all of the fun out of going to see the movie in the first place. You want to be surprised. You want to be left guessing. In that way you’re captivated and intrigued by the movie.

So what if he denied it was Khan? Who cares! They wanted you to be surprised.

So is there no possibility that he would play a completely new alien or completely new character? Seems like everyone is guessing he’ll be some new take on someone or at least some race we’ve already seen.

Uh…you know…just because Elba happens to be Black doesn’t mean that he has to play a Black character or a character previously played by a Black actor. He could well play a character irrespective of ethnicity.

Like Benedict Cumberbatch did in STID. :-)

i think he could be an original character…i also hope they come up with a new story especially as they are supposed to be beginning the landmark five year mission…no more bad guys with bigger ships please…actually i have faith that pegg can come up with a good story…maybe some zombies or an alien escaping from area 51 or even an end of the world bar scenario….could be worse..they could have chosen cho to do the story…harold and kumar take over the enterprise….hope its not too guardians of the galaxyish…or even faster and furiouser….sigh….were doomed, doomed i say…

@ #17 Capt. Roykirk –

There are always possibilities…but judging by their history, the likelihood is that Bad Robot and it’s writers will probably give us further ‘nu’-characters of what has gone before.

@ Cygnus-X1 –

Indeed, the excellent Elba may end up playing nu-Q for all we know…

Whoever or whatever is involved, I just hope this next Trek movie will include a moment or two with a real sense of wonder and awe about it, during the proceedings.

So I guess he’s playing a klingon then xD

Pegg lied about Khan and when they called him out on that he said that he doesn’t owe the fans the truth and he’s entlitled to lie.

I’d love to read something from the other writer and director…

However, in that same interview with Absolute Radio Pegg went on to say:

AR: Is he in the film?

SP: Idris… I heard there’s a rumor he’s been spoken to about stuff, so he may be in the film, but he won’t be a Klingon. [Laughs] Or maybe he will!

So he’s playing it cagey.

as Harry Ballz was quick to point out….and I immediately thought the same thing….Pegg out right lied about Khan the last time around.

Disinvited posted these excerpts from an in-depth interview with Pegg in the “Pegg talks “Trek 3”” thread.

===========================

211. Disinvited

And over at BLOODY DISGUSTING he told Kalyn Corrigan on March 27, 2015 the writing hasn’t gotten very far as they are still working on the outline:

http://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3337643/interview-simon-pegg-kill-me-three-times/

KC: So I was wondering, since you and Doug Jung are writing the script together, what’s the collaborative process with him like?

SP: Doug and I met for the first time a few weeks ago in London, and we kind of hit it off, fortunately, he’s a cool guy. We’re also working with a team of Bad Robot, with Lindsey Weber and Bryan Burk, who are friends we both know, and Justin Lin, obviously, who’s directing. It’s not an ideal way to work, to be, sort of like “okay, we need to make this film in four months, write it”. You have to kind of make it backwards. The production wants stuff. They’re like, “So what are we building? What are we designing?” We’re kind of having to come up with ideas and give them to production before we’re even sure that they’re the right ideas. But so far, it’s working out alright. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we’re in a very necessity type situation at the moment. I’m hoping to get to Bad Robot while I’m here and put in a few hours over there, and then Doug will come over to the U.K. next week and we’ll keep plugging away at it.

KC: Yeah, I was going to ask, do you spend a lot of time together? Or is it mainly on the phone, or on Skype?

SP: If I’m writing collaboratively, I want to be in the room with that person, because there’s just no substitute for it. I’ve had, before, when we started, this sort of creative meetings. I was on a conference call to Bad Robot, trying to get in to the conversation and not really being able to because I wasn’t in the room, you know. We will have to do a little bit of long distance stuff, because that’s just the way it is, but hopefully, as much as we can, we’ll be together in the room.

KC: Is it like, you write a couple of pages, and then he writes a couple of pages –

SP: We haven’t gotten that far yet. At the moment we’re fleshing out the outline. We’ve arrived at a story, and started to fill in the sort of detail, but until we get more specific, then we’ll be like, “you write that scene, I’ll write this scene”. It remains to be seen exactly how we’ll do it. It’s a learning process.

KC: So what is your process like Doug like vs. your writing process with Edgar Wright?

SP: Well with Edgar, we usually have a lot more time, for starters. It’s not like the sands of time are running out as they are with Star Trek. They want Star Trek out in 2016 because it’s the fiftieth anniversary, so, we are going into production in the summer no matter what. With Edgar, we’ll sit and talk, we’ll go away for the weekend together and just come up with ideas, and then we’ll sit and maybe just watch movies, just to get ourselves in the mood. And we live, or we did live close, now he lives here, but we usually get into an office together. We’ll put the script onto a big screen, and one of us will type and keep pace, and we swap and alternate, always in the same room, though.

KC: Always in the same room?

SP: Yeah, yeah. Because otherwise, if you’re doing stuff on your own, it’ll invariably change, because the collaborative process is compromise and meeting of minds. You might write a scene on your own and then give it to the other one and then they’ll change it, and then they send it back to you, and then you have to change it again, but if you’re in the same room together, that cuts out a lot of leg work.

KC: Is there anything you can tell me about Star Trek 3?

SP: God no.

KC: Doesn’t hurt to try.

SP: (Laughs) There’s not much I know about it, to be honest. No, absolutely.

https://trekmovie.com/2015/03/24/pegg-talks-trek-3/
===========================

Somehow I don’t find the writing process rea$$uring at all

18. Cygnus-X1 – March 30, 2015
Uh…you know…just because Elba happens to be Black doesn’t mean that he has to play a Black character or a character previously played by a Black actor. He could well play a character irrespective of ethnicity.

Like Benedict Cumberbatch did in STID. :-)

******************

Normally I’d say the same thing too, because it’s absolutely true. It also means that he doesn’t have to play a Klingon, because of the dark color of his skin. I love when thoughts like that are turned on their heads, like when everyone thought Peter Dinklage was going to play the diminunitive Puck in the X Men movie, and he ends up playing a character who is regular size. *L*

But…..man….I’d LOVE to see Elba play a Klingon, and Daystrom would be a close second! *LOL* I think he could really play a slightly demented genius very well. But the only thing is, with Elba, you’d be tempted to use his physicality as well, but no one wants to see Daystrom turn into Khan II.

Well, I do….*LOL*

@24 Ahmed,

Wow. It’s worse than I thought.

This is the question I’ve been asking since we first heard about Jung and Pegg. Who is Jung and why put him with Pegg. And now the answer is that they don’t know each other, and three months out they’re still trying to figure out how to work together, it’s not an optimal arrangement, they barely have a story, and NO outline.

Yeah, this is a mess.

I don’t think he lied about Khan being in the last movie…. I think that, being more of a fan than the other cast members, he really didn’t believe BC was really Khan any more than I did…. even when the character said he was.

At the most, he was Joachim.

I take him at his word. Fingers crossed they come up with a great script. I admit that I thought Orci’s script sounded pretty good.

27, Fred
That sounds too much like the SEINFELD where George explains how to beat a lie detector by relating that it isn’t really a lie if you truly believe it yourself.

24. Ahmed – March 30, 2015
Disinvited posted these excerpts from an in-depth interview with Pegg in the “Pegg talks “Trek 3”” thread.

Thanks for that. Very interesting. And confirming my instinct not to be too terribly excited about this movie.

If they tank on this 50th anniversary, I will be disgusted, but not very surprised.

@29. kmart,

Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie… if you believe it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ

Rumor denial from a man who lied about the the last films villain.
What else will this human anus pucker his lips about to squeeze off another dangling excrement of lies that you’ll all cross fire a conversation about?
Trekkers are either blind or simply have a short memory like the rest of society these days.

On an encouraging note, JJ Star Wars is likely to continue the Lucas failure course with Disney choking us to death with so much SW that we’ll vomit in fear of every announcement that another film is in the works.

@ 26. Curious Cadet – March 30, 2015

“Wow. It’s worse than I thought.”

Yeah, the way he describes it point to a very confusing production.

I just hope that something in the upcoming movie acknowledges the BIG anniversary Trek will be having. It would have been stellar to do that with a Shatner/Nimoy scene(s) but following the sad passing of Mr. Nimoy that won’t happen.

My feeling on using TOS characters is that, if the story organically calls for a character from TOS or is similar enough to a TOS character, then use it. I dont want them to forget that this universe takes place in the TOS era.

Maybe they should get Tom Hanks to play Daystrom if ethnicity doesnt matter.

Just me, but I think Mr. Elba is much better know as Heimdall than for the train wreck that was Pacific Rim.

Regardless, I won’t believe anything coming from Mr. Pegg. He lied like a rug about the last movie. “Fool me once, shame on you…” and all that.

Bummer. I was hoping for Kor.

Dang.

Okay, considering the fact that there are rumors that the studios want to include the Borg in the third film, I wouldn’t be surprise if Elba plays “NuDaystrom”, considering the fact that Daystrom is suppose to be a computer genius and a technological genius with issues.

To those who want something “new”: forget that thought. The whole point of the “preboot” is to mine an existing property of tropes and characters without having to come up with new ideas, even while updating TOS elements, for the big screen…and for marketing reasons. If there are going to be new ideas, expect that at the television level, where writers have more time and a freer hand in actually developing new concepts, et al. Don’t expect that to happen any time soon at the movie level, unless the studios want to have some sort of ‘Trek cinematic universe. Sorry to disappoint you, but it is what it is.

Wait. There are rumours of the Borg in the next film??

Is there any reason to suspect that Elba is playing Daystrom other than that Daystrom was played by a black actor in the 1960s and Elba is black?

That’s pretty damned weak.

I, for one, am not worried in the slightest about the quick turn-around time required for this new script. Too MUCH time (and sources of input) can also be injurious to the process.

Just look at “Into Darkness,” which, when you watch it, seems like it was jotted down onto a (large) cocktail napkin in a bar, whereas in reality we all know how long the release was delayed to get that script hammered out. Too many chefs in the kitchen with too much time for the job.

The fact this sucker needs to launch on time, and that it’s for the 50th simply make it that much more critical that the writers pull their fingers out and get to work.

@ 41. Nice point. A deadline and limited resources do a great deal to inspire creative solutions to one’s problems.

Sorry, I was referncing @ 43, AJ

Having fresh voices should help assuming they are talented. The benefit to keeping the same creative team is continuity with the look and feel but one could certainly argue the franchise took a huge step backward from 09 to STID so a fresh perspective should give us optimism.

Orci et al seemed to get locked into a certain formula and given Orci’s interactions with fans he didnt understand the issues with STID. Even Pegg admits STID had problems. I wonder if Orci has sent him a polite GFY email… :-)

That interview… is nothing…. like nothing… he said… nothing…

heh! yeah, it’s another cluster-trek ™, but with more musical chairs! LOL!

I agree with the nu-daystom call… cranston was also a good fit for this part ;-)

re: WE HAVE TO START FILMING BY SUMMER! – good luck trying to push that rope uphill… LOL! =D

…sounds like the nu-trek version of “the producers” – springtime for hitler, anyone? =P

It think it’ll be just fine if it’s a new character.

I’m probably one of the few that was happy with Khan in the last one, but still, this movie should be more about exploring other planets, and I think we should see a new character. I wouldn’t mind cameos from Harry Mudd, Syrano Jones or heck, even Daystrom, but the main villain should be a new character.

36 KenL

There are certainly ways to work it out if they wanted too. Marketing this as a 50th anniversary movie and not doing something nostalgic like that would be foolish. Hopefully this is one of the things that Pegg is referring to when he says it has to have certain things.