Abrams talks Star Trek sequels and his love for William Shatner
- 27 April 2009
- John Howell
Now that producer and director J. J. Abrams has completed the 11th Star Trek movie and the international release date is just around the corner, he took time out to promote the movie at a recent press day, discussing sequel possibilities and an early run in he had with William Shatner.
However he went on to say that if there is another movie, there's already a deal in place with the studio and actors. But...
"We have not had one meeting. We have not had one discussion. There’s no outline. There’s no script. There’s nothing. We’re fishing for ideas."
He also revealed that casting the new movie was a huge challenge.
"I’ve never had to cast something that had something that pre-existed it, where the actors have to take over these iconic roles. The key to each of these actors, and the one or two similarities, is that beyond just being incredibly talented, they’re all funny. They all have a great sense of humor, and that was incredibly important ‘cause I knew Star Trek had been parodied so many times that it had to be funny from the inside out."
This brought him to the public falling out he had with William Shartner, the first Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series and feature films. At one stage Shatner had expressed his dissatisfaction about not being part of the new movie by posting YouTube clips on his website.
"Nothing would have made us happier than to have William Shatner in this movie," said Abrams. "His character died on screen, in one of the films. When we tried to figure out a way to put him in, every time we did it, it was a gimmick. Every time we figured out a way that we thought it could work, it ended up being a gimmick, unless the whole story was about bringing him back, and that would have changed the entire story that we wanted to tell. So, it was either change everything or do it without him. But we definitely love Mr. Shatner. Working with him is something that we would obviously be thrilled to do, and wanted to do. It just literally didn’t work for our story, and he didn’t want to just do a cameo. We could have done a flashback, but he didn’t want to do that. And, if we had reinvented everything, it would have just been crazy. And, the YouTube thing happened because I was interviewed about it and I said, which was true, that we tried many different ways to get him in the movie and it just didn’t work. I guess he heard it and thought that they were saying that we had tried to get him in, and called him and were making efforts, so he did this video saying, 'You didn’t call me.' So, then I had to respond to that and say, “No, no, no, I don’t mean we called you. We were trying, internally, to tell a story that was worthy of you and worthy of the audience.” There was no way to do it and have it not be a cameo, so it didn’t work in this one. But, all is good."
Look out for SFFMedia's Star Trek movie review on 7 May.
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