I hope this isn't a repost
Sat Apr 22,11:58 PM ET
Young Kirk. Young Spock. Mr. Lost.
Those are the components Paramount Pictures has assembled to revive its sputtering Star Trek franchise.
A new big-screen movie, apparently featuring the early adventures of Trek forefathers James T. Kirk and Spock, and boasting the handiwork of Lost creator J.J. Abrams, is being primed for a 2008 release.
The studio wouldn't confirm the plot points, but did say Friday that the 39-year-old Abrams will produce, direct and cowrite the untitled project. His collaborators will be familiar names, to Abrams: Producers Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk, both from Lost; and writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, both from Mission: Impossible III, the upcoming Tom Cruise sequel that Abrams helmed.
There was no word on a cast. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, both 75, played Kirk and Spock, respectively, on the original 1966-69 Trek TV series and in several Trek movies.
The Abrams hire marks not only a rebirth, but a departure for Trek, maligned in a 2003 lawsuit as a franchise in "decay."
The new movie, the 11th in the series, apparently will be the first in some 15 years not to involve producer Rick Berman, who also oversaw every Trek series from Next Generation on. (Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died in 1991.) It'll also apparently be the first in more than 10 years not to star the Next Generation cast.
The most recent Trek movie was the 2002 box-office dud Star Trek: Nemesis. The most recent Trek series was the low-rated 2001-05 Enterprise, the first attempt to go back to the future with characters who predated Kirk and Spock.
From startrek.com to aintitcool.com, message-board reaction to word of the new movie was positive, if the poster was a fan of Abrams, and negative, if the poster wasn't a fan of prequels.
In its article Friday that broke the story, Variety didn't use the "P" word, but the trade paper made the Abrams movie sound very much like one, noting it'll show Kirk and Spock's "first meeting at Starfleet Academy and [their] first outer space mission."
"Did they learn nothing from Enterprise?," one distressed ainticool.com poster wrote Friday. "They had to redo the technology and changed established TREK lore to make it even marginally interesting, and ended up infuriating fans everywhere. Now they're going to screw around with the histories of Trek's two most important icons? STOP IT!"
Maintaining calm is author Win Scott Eckert, who has been collecting, compiling and otherwise straightening out Starfleet chronology since he was a boy back in the 1970s, and has the 184-page Star Trek Annotated Timeline to show for the effort. He, for one, is looking forward to the new movie, and isn't worried it'll wreak havoc with Kirk and Spock as fans know them.
"There is really very little that is Trek "canon" [meaning, info gleaned from the TV shows and movies] about these characters' early careers," Eckert said in an email interview Friday. "So, I can't see any reason why this prequel would not fit into canonical Trek continuity."
Besides, Eckert said, minor timeline conflicts he can handle--"my task will be to come up with reconciling explanations. All in fun, of course."
For those keeping score at home, or scrolling through Eckert's chronology, the new movie should take place sometime between the early 2230s, when Spock and Kirk are born, and 2262, when the two become bridge mates aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise (and when the stories of the original Trek series begin).
Prequels have been the rage in recent years for iconic pop-culture properties. Superman, Batman and Darth Vader are among those to have been youth-in-ized, in the upcoming Superman Returns, Batman Begins, and Star Wars: Episodes I-III, respectively.
A Star Trek prequel involving Kirk and Spock is not a new idea, and almost came close to getting made about two years ago, veteran Star Trek movie producer Harve Bennett told TrekNation.com in February.
"Some of the steam went out of it when my dear DeForest Kelley died," Bennett said of the actor who played Dr. McCoy. "He was going to be in it with Bill [Shatner] and Leonard, those were the only two regulars, and they were involved in a flashback. That's how we incorporated the three main characters into the prequel: it was a memory."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the latest Star Trek prequel project is that it flew under the fan radar. About the only news tangentially linking Abrams to Trek was a December Los Angeles Times report that said Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey desperately wanted the producer/writer on the studio lot.
Mission: Impossible III, opening May 5, is Abrams' first feature film as director. As a TV titan, he's created Felicity and Alias, in addition to Lost.
Abrams' screenplay credits include Armaggedon, raising the possibility of animal crackers joining the Trek canon.
Topic: "Trek" Rediscovered by "Lost" Creator (Read 1669 times)