Rumor

While this isn’t 100% official, The Hollywood Reporter just broke a story that says two new writers will be joining Roberto Orci in writing the 3rd Star Trek movie script. Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof are out. The new blood comes in the form of J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. These relatively unknowns do have a relationship with Bad Robot. The pair were tapped to write the script adapting the graphic novel Boilerplate in 2011 (as yet unreleased) for Bad Robot. That’s it though, there’s no other news on Trek 3 in the article, other than the common assumption that it’s supposed to be out in 2016 to coincide the 50th anniversary of the franchise. The next Star Trek film is untitled and unscheduled, but Paramount and Skydance are hoping to have a film in time for the franchise to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2016 Source: THR UPDATE: In a throw-away line in Variety’s coverage about Payne and McKay they buried a pretty big detail. Variety now reports Joe Cornish will NOT be the next director. Paramount and Skydance were at one point in talks with “Attack the Block” helmer Joe Cornish, but he is no longer involved. Source: Variety

According to Deadline.com, Joe Cornish (Attack the Block, The Adventures of Tin Tin) is strongly being considered for the director’s chair of the next Star Trek movie: Cornish followed by being one of the writers on The Adventures Of Tin Tin, and he and Edgar Wright wrote the script for Ant-Man, the Marvel Studios film that Wright is going to direct. Long story short, he’s gotten exposure to bigger scale projects than Attack The Block, in which he admirably depicted a full scale alien invasion on a relatively small budget. Doing a movie like this would certainly put his career on a warp speed path. He’s already working with Paramount on the novel adaptation Snow Crash which he’s prepping to present to the studio. — Deadline.com

While still nothing official has been announced about the next director for the 3rd Bad Robot Star Trek movie, the website HitFix caught up with J.J. Abrams during the home video release celebration of Into Darkness. They asked him about the rumor that Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) was being considered, and the status of any pre-production progress on the 3rd movie.

With Star Trek Into Darkness almost on home video, what’s happening with the third Star Trek theatrical release from the new “JJ ‘verse” timeline is foremost on Trek fans minds. There are multiples sources that say Paramount has a contender for the director’s seat, while J.J. Abrams will produce.

There are a couple of Star Trek sequel tidbits floating around the Internets that TrekMovie has been getting emails on and so once again we have done some checking and we have some debunking to do with regards to IMDB and Benedict Cumberbatch and also locations for the film. See below.

Director JJ Abrams has already confirmed he is considering Oscar-winning actor Benicio Del Toro to play the villain for his Star Trek sequel. There has been a lot of speculation regarding what role he will be playing and now there is an unconfirmed report on who he would be playing. See below for the possible spoiler. [UPDATE: JJ Abrams has denied the rumor]

The new year is almost upon us and with 2011 will come lots of stories about the Star Trek sequel, some real, some not real. But we have just one more rumor to debunk that came up during the holiday week that is kind of funny. It appears that there is an Craigslist calling for casting for the Star Trek sequel. Not that it is real or anything.  

Now that scripting has started on the new Star Trek movie, we shall expect more and more rumors to crop up. Today a new one has emerged from a report citing a source that says Khan will definitely not be the villain in the Star Trek movie, but a familiar TOS character will be. More on this rumor below.