In Hollywood, movies don’t truly get started until there is a script. Our studio sources have been telling us that only the ‘story’ (or ‘treatment’) for Star Trek XI has been completed. Now, according to Trek XI executive producer and co-writer Roberto Orci, it seems that Halloween is the target for the first draft of a script with filming starting as early as next summer. Orci revealed the schedule in response to an online query about the Trek XI time frame this Wednesday, saying:
Just started writing it. First draft by end of October, second by x-mas and hopefully shooting in summer or fall. If all goes REALLY well.
As reported here last week, Orci and writing partner Alex Kurtzman actively participate in the online community for their upcoming Transformers Movie project. Because the quote was from an online discussion, the Trek Movie Report contacted Mr. Orci directly and he confirmed the schedule as “Alex and my’s best guess”. It appears that the pair are now really diving into the Trek XI script; today Orci warned Transformers fans that he and Kurtzman are “going underground to take a bite out of Trek”.
But when will it be released?
This type of schedule is what would be expected for an early summer 2008 release. It would be about the same as the schedule for JJ Abrams recent Mission Impossible 3 which was released on the first weekend of May this year. In an interview TV Guide last month, Abrams said (regarding Trek XI) “I think we have an incredible story…we’re actively working on it, we’re in the middle of breaking the story, and it’s coming along great. I’d be happy to start sooner than Paramount thinks”. It was pointed out to us by a Paramount insider that even if Abrams is planning on a rapid schedule, that doesn’t mean it is Paramount’s schedule. Paramount has already slated the first weekend of May 2008 for Jon Favreau‘s Iron Man film (produced by the new Marvel Studios with Para as the distributor). Most recent Trek films have been released in the Christmas period and the summer of 2008 looks very competitive for action and genre films, the biggest of which is probably James Cameron‘s Avatar. Paramount is sure to not want a repeat of Christmas 2002 when the Star Trek Nemesis was crushed like a bug by Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Aside from quality issues, it’s true that the last Trek film was caught in the beginnings of the marketing/scheduling paradigm that now dominates the feature film business: the schedule is so crowded that at best a big film gets one weekend to make its mark.
One weekend.
A film that manages to hold the number one spot for more than one weekend is now something beyond successful; it’s a bona fide phenomenon.
This is more and more true at Christmas as well as the Summer season.
So, the real scheduling issue for Trek 10 is not so much Christmas or Summer but avoiding winding up within a week’s distance of another “Pirates.” Not so easy to do.
The good news is that the box office for Trek films is about as heavily front-loaded as any movies other than “Star Wars” flicks get — that is, folks either will or won’t turn out in huge numbers on day one (or minus one, at preview screenings).
i hope they get it this time around; i hope they get the REAL reason Enterprise and Voyager didn’t work: too politically correct. too john kerry and not enough george bush or ulysses grant or better yet, general sherman! Picard and the captains on down were all “lets talk first, then maybe we’ll shoot”, instead of “open fire when you see bad guys!” i know, it meshed with how the producers saw the cold war and then the thawing and then the state of the world with terrorists and diplomacy and building an intergalactic society. but hey, this prequel HAS to be about settling the Old West, the wild wild west of space…. or even back to Columbus’ days of taken scary voyages to the edge of the world…
So, the next Trek should be more George Bush? Then I have a storyline:
“The Romulans are building weapons of mass destruction, let’s bomb the whole damned Planet” And after the bombardment :”Well, we found no weapons at all, but the Romulan Praetor was an evil ass, so we were right in destroying their homeworld”.
7 seasons and “voyager” didn’t work? i can’t say as I follow that logic.
Didn’t watch that much “Enterprise” – it didn’t work for me because there was no visual continuity between “Enterprise” and TOS. I never “believed” “Enterprise” because the “look and feel” was all wrong – there was no place in the technology, costumes or the overall visual palette of the show to evolve to TOS.
That was my problem with “Enterprise” and will be my problem with ST XI if they decide to go down that road.
star trek is dead, bring back kirk
No one is interested in seeing a “STXI Kiddie Kirk” movie. This would be Paramounts way of chasing the success of Star Wars. ENT sucked thanks to Brannon Braga and RIck Berman.
This new movie better bring back KIRK! WILLIAM SHATNER and not that two bit Matt Damon.
This movie better be damn good because Abbrams has said how much of a fan of Trek he is. However he said the same thing about Superman. And if you go check it out. His Superman movie scripte was pure GARBAGE!!
SO BRING BACK WILLIAM SHANTER as KIRK and LEONARD NIMOY as Spock.
DO “The Return” book as STXI.
Otherwise shove it!
you know, star trek is about an age of peace and exploration. Granted Enterprise was on a different tone than voyager , but it really found its groove in the 4th season, and I was loving every episode. That groove was ” there the first generation that is making way for the next generations of explorers, like kirk and picard”. It was establishing a solid basis to explain certain things that happened in the other series (i.e. Data and the klingon ridge thing). Now they have an oppurtuninty to establish the most important base of trek history, the founding of the federation, and the romulan war that brought the planets together. That last episode of enterprise, didnt cut it, and it wasnt literally the federation that troi and riker were seeing the birth of, it was a simple alliance.
Paramount had a series that really, was beginning to establish itself as “what it was like before the federation” type storyline, and also had terrific writers and actors who convinced me that they’re characters are the pionneers of deep space exploration. The series was left of without really giving enterprise a closure, and they had a really good romulan plot in the 4th season that saw , in a small way, just how interesting it could be to see a war between earth and the romulan empire.
So let just see what could be here…. You have a set of characters that have established themselves as “the first ones out there”. You have a storyline that has set the basis for the only mentioned of romulan war, you have a good writer/director who has recently directed a well done action movie and also you have the actors from enterprise who know there characters really well, love trek and left off when there characters were evolving. The only thing in question is the tone and atmosphere of the war and characters set, because, doing a romulan war story, it will either be a hit or a flop, but really think, if it was done right, and its a hit, it pretty much guarantees immortality for star trek, with no doubt. Think about it, theres potential in this.