Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman are having a good summer. They’ve written both Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, which ain’t bad going, but during interviews for the latter the only thing people seem interested in is the sequel to the former.
While speculation about the follow-up to Star Trek was inevitable, Orci and Kurtzman have been fanning the flames, even though they haven’t actually started work on the script for Star Trek 2 yet. While they’ve previously been a bit vague, an interview with Collider managed to squeeze a bit more info out of them, including the fact that JJ Abrams hasn’t yet agreed to direct the movie, they plan to have the script done by Christmas and Paramount is pushing for filmaing to begin as soon as humanly possible.
However most interesting was what they had to say about how they want the sequel to work, as well as opening up themes to be explored in future sequels by taking inspiration from Star Trek II and III. They said, “The exploration sci-fi plot where the unknown and nature itself is somehow an adversary or the villain model. That’s an active discussion we’re having right now. In terms of thinking about more than one movie, we want the movie to be self-contained in a way, but we’re discussing the idea of having a couple of threads where if the second movie works, you could pick up into a cohesive whole. There was no thread more exciting or shocking for me when in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, you realise that Spock grabbed Bones and downloaded his Katra into him. When I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I was like, “What’s going on here?” Two years later, you’re watching it and you’re like “They’re geniuses! They’re geniuses!” So we’re trying to think if there’s a version of that. But again, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan does not rely on that thread, even though it turns out to be a thread. So we’re thinking in those terms.”
It sounds as if it could be pretty interesting. Better than Transformers 2, anyway.