Abrams Talks STAR TREK Without Shatner
The new Trek director explains why The Shat won't hit the fans.
AMC Blogs' SciFi Scanner recently managed to pry some Star Trek info out of director JJ Abrams.
Appropriately enough, the first question addressed viral marketing, an approach that worked very successfully for the Abrams-produced Cloverfield.
"I think there can be some great stuff with Trek that way; I just don't want to waste anyone's time," said Abrams. "I don't want to do anything where you feel like, ugh, that wasn't worth it. It could be great, but it's all still in development."
Then AMC zeroed in on the "Shatner Question."
William Shatner's involvement in the Star Trek reboot movie has been debated ever since pre-production. Since the original Captain Kirk faced the final frontier in 1994's Star Trek Generations, the topic likely would have faded away, had it not been for Shatner's own public tantrum at receiving no role in the new film. Others, such as co-writer Roberto Orci, have addressed this issue before, but now Abrams decided to go on the record about it.
"We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves," Abrams said. "The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling. It's funny--a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that."
Star Trek warps into theaters on May 8th, 2009.
[Thanks to RYAN PARSONS.]