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Thought it might be worth having a single thread for minor stories, gossip, and rumours.

To kick off

It looked like 2016’s Star Trek prequel-threequel was in trouble last month, following the hasty departure of co-writer/director Roberto Orci. But not long after Paramount hired Fast & Furious savior Justin Lin to helm the film, now comes news guaranteed to cheer up a few Trek fans. According to Deadline, the film has two new writers: Doug Jung and Simon Pegg.

Pegg, of course, played Scotty in the first two films of the rebooted Trek franchise. But Pegg’s writing bona fides are impressive: Alongside longtime collaborator Edgar Wright, he co-wrote modern cult classics Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End.

Interesting...

Fast & Furious... Not good.

Teaos wrote:Fast & Furious... Not good.

Agreed, to my mind that particular credential doesn't really mean anything terribly positive.

Mikey wrote:

Teaos wrote:Fast & Furious... Not good.

Agreed, to my mind that particular credential doesn't really mean anything terribly positive.

... but he is the "Fast & Furious savior"... Savior man savior!!!

There are some franchises that shouldn't be saved.

Lin is pretty good at action. His direction turned the Fast and Furious movies from racing movies to heist movies, which he made exciting and fun. He'll probably be like J.J. Abrams. The real hero of the next Trek movie will have to be the writers. Will these characters matter? Will I like one of them? Will there be another super ship to kick the Enterprise's ass? Will I give a damn?

Now that Simon Pegg has been tapped as a writer for Star Trek XII, will this be an improvement over Robert Orci?

EXCLUSIVE: Simon Pegg has been set to co-write Star Trek 3, the film that just got Fast & Furious director Justin Lin aboard after Roberto Orci exited the helmer chair. He will co-write the script with Doug Jung, creator of the TNT series Dark Blue. Pegg’s already a pivotal player in the JJ Abrams-produced Paramount/Skydance pic; he also will reprise his role as Scotty, the engineering wiz originated by James Doohan in the original 1960s Gene Roddenberry series. Don’t be surprised if Scotty beams up further on the call sheet. Jung also wrote for Bad Robot and Paramount a film called Diamond, which is how he got the gig. They are just getting underway.

Anyone familiar with this Dark Blue?

That's the problem - Lin is an action director. 'Trek has always been about much more than action, and I'm not convinced that Michael Bay Jr. can pull that off.

Mikey wrote:That's the problem - Lin is an action director. 'Trek has always been about much more than action, and I'm not convinced that Michael Bay Jr. can pull that off.

Simon Pegg and Doug Jung will have to be the heroes we deserve. If only Edgar Wright could have been tapped. I have more faith in him as a director and writer and he's have been working with Pegg.

It's not the writing with which I have an issue. The best writing in the world means less than a rat's ass if the director can't execute it, much the same as great direction can't polish the turd of crap writing.

I would like these movies a lot more if they didnt have Star Trek in the name, simply because they just arent. Why not just make them an all new moview franchise. As it is they have nothing to do with Trek appart from taking the name.

...and the setting, and the characters, and the backstory of all the plot points. Other than that, though, nothing in common at all.

Not really. Yeah they have the same names, but they are totally different characters, so no, they arent the same characters, they just share a name.

Setting is very different, again just sharing names. The plot points could be easily switched into generic space movie X.

Seriously. If you switched out the names of people and places it would be a fundamentally different movie. Where as if you switched out the names of the original, its still Star Trek because it is the spirit of the show that makes it, not the names.

I could as easily say that the same characters aren't really the same characters for any other franchise, but it's an empty statement. Kirk (for one example) may have been treated differently between 'Trek and neoTrek, but in both cases he's still James T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise.

Sounds like a letter of the law/spirit of the law kind of thing. The spirit was meant to convey a specific meaning, the letter can be interpreted many different ways.

I disagree with the settings being so different as to not call them Trek...

TOS was very different from TNG, which was very different from DS9, which was different from ENT, which had not much in common with most of the movies, yet they all have the Star Trek name, because they all relate to the same material, just like the new Trek movies...

Although, With Lin directing, I am also a bit worried that we'll have souped-up vessel races with big Nacelle Fenders and Nitrous boosts racing around the Galaxy, but hey, if Simon Pegg writes the script, I'm confident the story will be good, and the characters interesting, even if the new Captain of the Racer-prise is Dominic Torreto the XIVth...