This will hardly come as a surprise to most of us – since we’ve been assuming for ages that the siren lure of the captain’s director’s chair would be too great for him to ignore - but while he hasn’t formally committed, it’s now all but certain that JJ Abrams will be directing Star Trek 2.
And, just as predictably, Deadline’s report confirms all the rumours and speculation that the long development process combined with Abrams’ indecision about whether he really would take the job (he was, after all, a little busy making Super 8 and producing a thousand different other scripts, movies and TV shows) means that Paramount has decided to shove the Trek sequel from its original June 2012 release berth and offer the date instead to what is now apparently called G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
As to where the Enterprise and her crew will find a scheduling dock, that’s anyone’s guess. Right now it seems that shooting will kick off in January next year, with the aim of trying to either get it into late 2012 or summer 2013.
The studio has now picked up the cast’s contracts, which means that the likes of Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Zoe Saldana will all be reporting for duty whenever this thing actually launches into warp speed.
Trek writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and new recruit Damon Lindelof have been hard at work cranking out script drafts, so assuming he signs on the dotted, Abrams will need to get to approving the thing and making some decisions…