Variety: Star Trek 11 Coming

April 22, 2006

According to today’s report in Variety, Paramount Pictures plans to release a new Star Trek film in fall 2008. J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) is slated to direct, write and produce, which gives me some hope that this project won’t suffer the fate of 2002′s Nemesis.

The big worry for me is that Abrams’ intelligence and creativity will be stifled by the constraints of working within a franchise system. It’s one thing to come up with an original story when you can invent your own characters, timeline and mythology. To do so for Star Trek, with its 10 films’ and 700+ TV episodes’ worth of material, seems more challenging. At least Abrams has experience dealing with sequels; his installment in the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible series comes out May 5.

Sorkin back in the Studio

April 20, 2006

I just read in this week’s issue of The New Yorker that Aaron Sorkin, creator of Sports Night and my current favorite show The West Wing, is coming back to NBC. Sorkin, who left The West Wing in 2003 after a dispute with the network, will have a new drama on NBC’s fall schedule: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The premise: a creative team is hired to save a live sketch-comedy show that just happens to resemble NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Tina Fey, co-head writer for SNL, is working on a similar project starring her and Alec Baldwin, but I give Studio 60 better odds of sticking. There will be a lot of people in mourning when The West Wing finishes its run (as of this writing, only three more episodes are remaining), and it would help NBC to have another smart, funny, character-driven drama in the wings. Plus, Studio 60 has attracted a number of good actors, including Sorkin regulars Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield, as well as Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber and Judd Hirsch.