Just forget the words and sing along

Friday, April 21, 2006

JJ Abrams doing Star Trek

OH...MY...GOD.

Today, it was announced by Paramount Pictures that JJ Abrams has been signed on to write and direct a new Star Trek movie.

Abrams should need no introduction. He is the newest God among geeks. He is the creator of the cult-hit Alias. He's currently in charge of the other cult-hit Lost. He makes his directorial debut next week as the writer and director of Mission: Impossible III, which is already being declared the first good film in the series.

The script will be written by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. They are Abrams's right-hand men and writers-of-choice. Kurtzman and Orci wrote many of the better episodes of Alias and the screenplay for Mission: Impossible III. In non-Abrams related work, they just put the finishing touches on the script for the live-action movie version of The Transformers.

The premise of this JJ Abrams Star Trek film: a teenaged Kirk and Spock first meet at Starfleet Academy and have their first adventure together.

This is exactly the same as the fabled Star Trek: The Academy Years project. You probably know this. Harve Bennet, the producer of Star Trek II-V, wanted to do a "Kirk and Spock first meet at the academy" movie for Star Trek VI. After spending a year of development work on it, the big brass at Paramount said, "Yup, you can do this Academy movie...as long as you give us a more conventional Star Trek film with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in 9 months." Bennet said, "You can't make a special-effects movie like Star Trek in 9 months!" So Paramount fired Bennet and Star Trek: the Academy Years became one of those fabled "what if..." projects.

But not anymore! JJ Abrams' Star Trek is already penciled in for a Summer 2008 release.

And Rick Berman? He's no where in the picture.

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