The third installment in the Star Trek series is eyeing a new writing team.
According to Badass Digest, the duo of Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz are rumored to be writing Star Trek 3. They are known for writing Thor, helping out with X-Men: First Class and being writers and producers on Fringe.
If this is true, they will take over for Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, who wrote the first two films and would still be on the writing team in some capacity. Official news should come soon as Paramount wants to get it out in time for Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary in 2016.
I greatly enjoyed the first two Star Trek films and thought the writing was fine, so it’ll be interesting to see how a change will affect that. The big question for me is whether J.J. Abrams will come back to direct or not. If Paramount wants Star Trek 3 out in 2016, that may be hard with Abrams still on-board to direct Star Wars: Episode VII. I’d like him to come back, but we’ll see.
This is actually great news! Obviously, the ideal situation would be for Abrams to come back and direct and Kurtzman and Orci to come back and write the third movie. But with Abrams at the helm of Star Wars, and speedy nature that Paramount will want Trek 3, its all but official that Abrams will not be at the helm.
With that said, even if Abrams can’t be in the director’s chair, it would still be great to see him involved in this project.
What the news of the writing team getting switched up to Miller and Stentz, with Kurtzman and Orci still involved, means though is that Trek 3 is staying in the Bad Robot family! (Miller and Stentz were writers on Fringe, which was a Bad Robot production).
Hopefully what this means is that Bad Robot will still be the production company working on Trek 3, which means that Abrams will stay as the film’s guardian!
Don’t count out Abrams just yet! There are rumors going around that he could dropping out of Star Wars as he’s being forced to do some things he doesn’t want to do. So if that happens, I think he’ll definitely be directing Star Trek 3.
That would be the best news for Star Trek fans. And Disney has overtly denied the claims saying that Abrams is “having a great time working on the script and is looking forward to start shooting next year.”
But however it turns out, keeping Star Trek in the Bad Robot family is a great news!
On a side note- I am really hoping that the third movie will launch a new Trek TV Series also produced by Bad Robot. Which given that it might be putting a step between Abrams and the actual show, could be a really good thing.