|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
TrekUnited Exclusive: William Shatner back in Star Trek! |
|
|
|
Written by Derek Kessler on
Monday, 31 March 2008
|
|
|
|
 Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. After months of repeated denials, Star Trek has taken a cue from Apple and kept their biggest secret under wraps. Until today. Principle filming was reported to have ended on last Thursday, with JJ Abrams headed off for the Japanese premiere of Cloverfield and returned to the Star Trek lot to oversee a handful of ‘pick-up shots’ with a few of the main cast. That’s when a familiar face was spotted entering Paramount’s Stage 9: William Shatner.
Pick up shots are typically not supervised or even attended by the producer or director, but JJ Abrams is a notorious micro-manager of his productions, thus his taking the reigns of Star Trek as both the producer and director. Even so, it was surprising to see him returning from Japan so soon only for pick-up shots with none of the principle cast scheduled for filming on Monday.
And then William Shatner stepped into the frame of the paparazzo’s camera. Since principle filming was supposed to have wrapped, the paparazzi weren’t camped out around the Paramount Pictures lot looking for shots of Quinto, Pine, and Pegg in costume. Only one lone camera was watching the sets, and they were kind enough to send their pictures to TrekUnited.
The secret publically revealed, JJ Abrams admitted to Shatner’s role, “Bill is in the film.” Like all other cast and crew, he was tight-lipped about what part The Shat will be playing. A number of rumors have swirled about Shatner’s involvement in the film, with proposals that he will be playing an older version of James T. Kirk’s father George Kirk (the young version is being played by Chris Hemsworth), the Commandant of Starfleet Command, or a chef aboard the Enterprise.
TrekUnited has learned William Shatner will be playing a very familiar role: James T. Kirk. The storyline of Star Trek revolves around Eric Bana’s Nero tinkering with the timeline in an effort to remove Kirk from the timeline. Old Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, travels back in time in an effort to undo the damage and inadvertently undoes the events at the end of Star Trek Generations, both saving Kirk after he returns from the Nexus and preventing the destruction of the Enterprise-D. This spurns a new timeline in which the Enterprise-D crew participated in a protracted Dominion War that has devastated the Federation and resulted in a Cold War-like stalemate.
While the principle cast for Star Trek (2009) has been signed for two additional movies, with the introduction of a brutal new future Star Trek timeline the possibilities of where Abrams, Kurtzman, and Orci will be taking future Star Trek movies are plentiful. Depending on the success of Star Trek in theaters, they are considering pursuing further developments in the Original Series timeline, or remaining in the post-Nemesis dystopian alternate future where the film will end, which could mean more Nimoy and Shatner.
The paparazzo also sighted Leonard Nimoy, but was unable to take any conclusive pictures of the actor. While Abrams would not confirm if Nimoy and Shatner will be sharing screen time or if Shatner will be appearing alongside Chris Pine (young James T. Kirk), the presense of Nimoy on set at the same time as Shatner seems indicative of the former. You can checkout the pictures of Shatner and Nimoy outside Stage 9 here, only on TrekUnited.
View: Shatner at Star Trek set images
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
|
|
|
|
|
"What's a knock-out like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?"
|
|
