In Hollywood and in “Star Trek” fandom it’s never too early to talk “sequel.”
And with anticipation for the new Star Trek film already at Warp Factor 10, it’s no surprise that hailing frequencies are already open for a second big screen installment.
“It would be incredible fun to get to do it again,” director J.J. Abrams told us. “It is also insanely presumptuous to assume that it will work when it’s out there, that people will like it, and that there will be a need for another one. If there is, the good news is that there’s a deal for the writers and a deal for the actors. It’s in place. We have not had one meeting. We have not had one discussion. There’s no outline. There’s no script. There’s nothing. We’re fishing for ideas.”
ComingSoon.net chatted with “Trek” screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (who co-wrote Tranformers: Revenge of the Fallen) and producer Damon Lindelof (“Lost”) who are signed for script duties for the proposed sequel to get a clearer vision of what could be ahead [SPOILER ALERT: while we’ve edited out any direct references to the new film’s plotline, certain inferences can be made from the comments below].
ComingSoon.net: Are you thinking about a sequel?
Damon Lindelof: Alex, Bob and I are going to be writing it together. We’ve started preliminary talks with J.J., but obviously it’s almost jinxing it to get too far down the road. We want it to come out, we hope it does well, and then we’ll take it to the next year. We’re a little curious as to what the audience wants. We’ll start to get a sense of what they are responding to in the movie. We want to write it for them too.
Alex Kurtzman: We’re HOPING sequel. We had the amazing privilege of falling in love with these characters all over again. The idea that we would let them go now seems inconceivable. We can’t wait. Hopefully they will let us do one.
Roberto Orci: Fans have been so important. We genuinely mean it when we say we want to wait and see what they think of the first movie. We want to see if we are lucky enough to get a demand for a second movie. Lets see what our fan consultants say. We were fans. These “Star Trek” fans are some of the smartest fans in the world.
CS: Are you going to look at the iconic episodes for those things and figure out how to spin them? “Space Seed,” “The City on the Edge of Forever, “Amok Time,” etc?
Orci: We HAVE to look back.
Kurtzman: Definitely we did that on this movie.
Orci: We’ll do it again.
Kurtzman: A lot of what you see in the movie there is a lot of crossover in terms of what happened in their lives. I think we see this new timeline as in harmony with the old timeline. You’ll see a lot of the characters through a slightly different lens.
Orci: We are going back and getting a refresher course again.
CS: You’re already conversant with the lore and mythology. Are you thinking about finding the elements from the most iconic shows and putting a spin on those?
Lindelof: I think that everybody is expecting us to do “Okay, now it’s the continuing adventures of the Starship Enterprise, so they can start doing the stories” Our approach to those stories will be from an entirely different angle. Hopefully the old fans will go “Oh, wow. That looks familiar to me.” But then suddenly we zig instead of zagging. Or we warp instead of going impulse power. That’s what is exciting about doing this.
CS: I’m on a one-man mission to plant the seed now. If you decide to revisit the character of Khan, two words: Javier Bardem.
Kurtzman: Oh my God!
Orci: Did you know we’ve actually mentioned that out loud as a possibility? What a great idea.
Lindelof: Come on. That’s a no-brainer. That would be the most amazing thing ever. Who would even what to see these [new] guys then? That’s the problem. You would just watch them for scenery.
Star Trek opens in conventional and IMAX theaters at 7pm on Thursday, May 7th.
