CS: The "Star Trek" movie you guys have been working on has been fairly low-key and kept very quiet. Are you guys going to try to bust something out at Comic-Con for that?
Kurtzman: We are trying to get our act together here in the last moments. We're so focused on editing the movie that we've forgotten about promoting it. We're not sure what we're going to release it with. We're trying to figure it out.

Orci and Kurtzman's next project Eagle Eye will be released on September 26 and they have Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen next summer, but we'll probably hear more about some of those other projects discussed in the next few months.

Plot Summary: From director J.J. Abrams ("Mission: Impossible III," "Lost" and "Alias") and screenwriters Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman ("Transformers," "MI: III") comes a new vision of the greatest space adventure of all time, "Star Trek," featuring a young, new crew venturing boldly where no man has gone before.

Starring: John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Winona Ryder, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana, Leonard Nimoy, Marlene Forte, Jimmy Bennett

CS: You've said that you didn't start out as an uber-fan of "Star Trek," but you quickly became a fan. Can you talk in general terms about what you fell in love with about the whole franchise?
Abrams: I fell in love with the relationships between the characters. I fell in love with the characters. The idea of – it's so funny because you hear something so often and it loses it's meaning. But "space, the final frontier" – if you actually consider space as uncharted territory there's something about the idea of these people, because any ship flying by isn't going to get you excited. It's who's on the ship that matters. I feel like these characters actually going out into that nothingness and finding something is great. Having lived with it now and gotten to know the characters and worked with amazing actors who portrayed them, it made me fall in love with that notion, that idea that for some reason never struck me the way that "Twilight Zone" did.

CS: Are you ready to talk about the Jennifer Morrison character? There's been a lot of speculation and confusion as to exactly who she's playing.
Abrams: She is so great. I'll just say that she plays Kirk's mother. She's awesome. Great.

CS: Does the film feature many flashback sequences? We also know that Winona Ryder is playing Spock's mother.
Abrams: Yeah, most of the movie is not - I wouldn't call them flashbacks, but she's in a great sequence and is so good. I love her.

CS: What can you say about about working with Leonard Nimoy?
Abrams: It was really just a dream experience, working with him. He is everything you want him to be. He's funny and incredibly thoughtful and was surprisingly open and receptive to direction. He's just got an amazing wife and family and working with him was literally... Like the other day we were doing some ADR and he was there and because we weren't shooting anymore I was standing there and I just looked at him while he was doing his thing. I wanted to burn it into my head. It was so great to get to work with that guy. He's just an amazing man and is terrific in the movie.

CS: Is he a major presence in the film?
Abrams: Yeah. I think he's a major presence in any scene he's in. He's terrific.

Updated young characters revealed!
Having new young faces for this prequel will definitely attract the younger generations of the old favorites

The four new Star Trek posters feature (clockwise from upper right below): John Cho (Sulu), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), and Karl Urban (McCoy):

Why is William Shatner Not in Star Trek?

AMC's SciFi Scanner talked to Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, who explained why you won't see William Shatner reprising the role of Captain James T. Kirk:

Q: How do you react to William Shatner's ire at not having a role in the movie?

A: It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling. It's funny -- a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.

Paramount Pictures will release Star Trek on May 8, 2009

Star Trek Trailer To Be Dropped on Bond



Trekkies have been holding their breath in anticipation for Paramount to announce which fall movie they will drop the first Trek trailer on. TrekMovie is reporting that the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, will be the lucky bearer of the preview. They also claim that “Our current poll states that 45% of Trek fans will see ‘any movie’ or ‘almost any movie’ just to catch a glimpse of the trailer. Many Trek fans went to see Cloverfield in its record-breaking opening weekend, just to be the first to see the Star Trek teaser trailer.” That is quite a statistic. Almost every guy I know is into Star Trek. Which means, almost every guy I know will go see the new Bond movie, to see the preview for the Star Trek movie. Is it me, or is this all sounding super geeky?

The Star Trek movie will chronicle the early careers of the Enterprise crew. It’s an origin story about Kirk, Scotty, Spock and company. With Transformers and MI III scribes, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman writing the script, it sounds like its going to be huge. Paramount is hoping it will be, at least.

The European press tour will kick off after the trailer has gone public. Because Star Trek hasn’t done as well across the pond, Paramount wants to get the buzz lit over there. Abrams and executive producer Bryan Burk will show clips to European journalists to spark the planned media frenzy.

Abrams Plans To Boldly Go Fast



It’s getting to the point where you need to clear a good four hours off your schedule to see a major movie. Nobody can tell a good story in under two and a half hours and combined with the trailers, the drive time, and the need to get there a bit early, we are spending longer at the theater than we do watching the Oscars, which is pretty scary.

One filmmaker who is sick of the longer and longer run times is J.J. Abrams. He’s making a stand with Star Trek. It’s going to be two damn hours and not a second longer. Well, maybe a second longer, but not much more than that. As he tells the MTV Movie Blog, “I’m sick of these two hours and forty-five minute movies. Seriously, it’s like I don’t have enough time to stay two hours and forty-five minutes. I’m exhausted just saying that twice. I can’t stand it.” So, he’s going to buck the trend of movies that seem to be getting longer and longer for no real reason.

I’m a firm believer that many movies would be improved with tighter editing. Something like The Dark Knight works at a longer running time and I remember watching L.A. Confidential and wishing it was twice as long, but they are the exceptions. Other directors need to keep one eye on the clock and it’s good to hear Abrams will be a vanguard in that brigade.

Abrams talks Trek time



If you were expecting JJ Abrams' STAR TREK to be an endlessly epic experience, make plans for after the flick.

The director believes you actually can get too much of a good thing -- he fully intended to keep the film contained around the two-hour mark. “I’m sick of these two hours and forty-five minute movies," he tells MTV (obviously referring to lengthy summer fare like THE DARK KNIGHT). "Seriously, it’s like I don’t have enough time to stay two hours and forty-five minutes. I’m exhausted just saying that twice. I can’t stand it.”

It seems ironic that the guy who stretched convoluted subplots and obfuscation across several seasons of TV's "ALIAS" (not to mention his complicity in the frustrations of "LOST") is someone without significant patience for entertainment, or maybe he just learned something about brevity from working on the hit-em-and-run horror flick CLOVERFIELD.

Extra Tidbit: Abrams discusses the furor about the (non) participation of Shatner right here, which could conceivably be yet more misdirection.