MTV.com got an exclusive with Star Trek XI co-screenwriters and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci where they spilled a very few beans (their most common reply to the interviewer seems to be “Really, who can say?”) – including one that feels pretty big to me: Star Trek XI is not a prequel but rather a ‘reimagining.’ In other words, they’re rebooting the series.
"We’re not going to start totally from scratch," Orci said. "We want it to feel like it’s updated and of the now. That’s actually the discussions we’re having now: how to keep the look of the universe yet have it not look like nothing’s new. It’s tricky."
They wouldn’t confirm any casting (although Kurtzman said he’s a huge Matt Damon fan), and they wouldn’t even confirm if Bones is in the film. They would say that this installment will be the biggest yet, with the most action. "The economic models of the other [films] were very much based on the fans out there and their purchasing power,” said Orci. “With this one we’re going for the broad audience to bring people into ‘Trek’ for the first time."
When you sit back and look at it, it’s pretty amazing that Paramount is pouring so much into what was, just a couple of years back, an exhausted franchise. Some people said that Trek should lay dormant for a while, to get fresh again for audiences, but I think that was Kurtzman and Orci have hit on here is that Trek has been dormant for most moviegoers for years – nobody wanted to see those Next Generation movies, and nobody wanted to watch those spin-off TV shows. Star Trek was only speaking to the converted, and the rest of the world was paying no attention.
By the way, if this shapes up as Paramount hopes, we’re about to enter a world where Star Trek is hipper than Star Wars. Chew on that.
And a quick note to MTV: Please, streamline your site. It takes an eon for a page to load with all that flash and video and nonsense. I want to read a news story and I have to have something else playing on the side and in my headphones? No thanks.