Deadline reported yesterday that
J.J. Abrams is 'close' to announcing an expected return to the director's chair on
Star Trek 2 but because his next project
Super 8's post-production took longer than expected to sew up before it's release in a few weeks time, Abrams would now be hard pressed to meet the June 29th, 2012 release date long ago set by Paramount for his sequel. The studio are now said to be mulling over a six month release delay, pushing Trek 2 into the realms of a Winter 2012 territory or perhaps even May 2013 which I would suggest is a sensible move as the script by the returning
Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and
Damon Lindelof does not sound like it's in any shape to film in a few months. In fact recent quotes to
Trek Movie suggest the trio only have a
70 page treatment at this stage and not anything like a full script as everyone was waiting to find out when Abrams would officially sign on. Orci told the site;
Just been waiting for JJ to be free to really decide if he likes the story and hear his suggestions before we finish the script. Once he says go, well have it in no time. Meanwhile, our outline is detailed enough (70+ pages!) to do some prep :)... In the meetings weve had with JJ, hes already given us amazing input and ideas, and thats been while hes been up to his eyeballs in Super 8."
Deadline also suggest that with Kurtzman preparing his directorial debut with
Welcome to the People, with Orci writing
Ender's Game and with Damon Lindelof still helping out Ridley Scott with
Prometheus, perhaps the worry is the screenplay hasn't had as much due care as the original. In that case a delay of voyage can only be a positive thing as much as it sucks that we would have to wait a little longer for Star Trek 2. Wouldn't we rather wait to get a fully realised film than one rashly put together?
Of course for star
Chris Pine he must be getting somewhat irritated now. He had been expecting to shoot
a Jack Ryan reboot centered on his persona right now before script problems delayed that Paramount project until at least next year and now Star Trek 2 might well lose it's August/September start date also. Though Deadline do suggest that one scenario that MIGHT happen (but would seem unlikely) is if
the newly boarded David Koepp, who officially began re-drafting the Jack Ryan reboot yesterday, gets his script completed fairly quickly... perhaps that film might just nab the June 29th release date and film first. But that does seem to be a stretch. Other studio's are now said to be eying that lucrative June date for their own tentpoles and we should remember that J.J. Abrams' original film also incurred a delay, originally set for a late 2008 bow it eventually opened May 2009.