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.
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