Intrepid and dedicated Screen Rant regular reader "790" took it upon himself to visit Creation Entertainment's 16th Annual GRAND SLAM: THE SCI-FI SUMMIT in Burbank, CA over the weekend and reported back with the latest from the Paramount panel on J.J. Abrams upcoming Star Trek reboot movie.
The host at the panel was my friend Anthony, from TrekMovie.com. While screenwriter Roberto Orci was in attendance, co-scripter Alex Kurtzman was not able to attend. I've distilled the report down to a few bullet points for you. Some of it is info that is already out there, but there are a few new details that were revealed.
Here are the highlights:
- The budget on the film is far below $200MM.
- The film will be rated PG-13.
- The release date was pushed back to summer '09 because Paramount really wants it to be a summer blockbuster.
- The intent was to re-invent the Star Trek franchise, and that is why they went all the way back to start at the beginning.
- The script was written with Leonard Nimoy in mind. Nimoy read the script and liked it. It seems he's so pivotal to the story that they would have had a big problem if he hadn't liked it.
- Yes, the USS Enterprise will be assembled in space, although parts of it will be assembled on Earth.
- Orci revealed that originally Steven Spielberg read the script and talked to J.J. Abrams about directing it during a set visit to the Transformers set. Abrams mentioned it to his wife, who also helped talk him into the final decision to take on the potentially scary project.
- Nimoy was there and said that Star Trek 11 is a gigantic movie. It's the biggest film he's ever worked on and that it will be worth waiting for. He also said that Paramount is losing money on this investment now because they really have a lot of faith in the film as a summer blockbuster.
- He also went on to say that he didn't like the death of Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. He resented it. He then went on to say that it would have been damaging to the story to put Shatner in the film.
I find it VERY interesting to see Nimoy's comments regarding how including Shatner in the film would have been detrimental to the story. That makes it sound to me like all the talk by the producers and writers of trying to find a way to write "old Kirk" into the storyline may indeed have been B.S. all along, and put out there just to appease the fans.
On the other hand, it seems like the very thing that may have kept Shatner out of the movie was indeed his death in Generations. That makes his death in the movie doubly terrible: First, it was an ignoble death for the character, alone on a desert planet and now, second, it ended up keeping Shatner from appearing in what may be the seminal re-birth of the Trek franchise.
So now you've got the latest scoop on the Star Trek movie. It's nice to get an update after it's been so quiet lately and I want to give a huge thank you to Screen Rant's own serial commenter: "790." :-)
Star Trek is scheduled to open on May 8, 2009.
1 comment:
That all sounds good but I continue to be bummed at the treatment Generations gets. Wasn't Kirk's other death in that movie good enough?
Lousy fanboys.
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