STAR TREK 2 already being scribed

Oh how big the mountains are that Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman must climb. With J.J Arbram's reboot of Star Trek still going strong in theaters, Orci and Kurtzman, the screen writers behind the film, are already gearing up to write a sequel. In an interview with SCI FI Wire they spilled the beans...

We have agreed to write another one. We're going to start thinking about it any second now. But we're still just having a mental sorbet before we jump back in. And, you know, just seeing all the reactions to the movie. We want to make sure we take it all in and really figure out what worked and what didn't and proceed from there. But now that we have ... an open canvas, ... anything can happen.

Well almost... anything. You can put the Klingon sword down. Orci addressed that even though fans accepted the use of a time incursion to reboot everything...

[you] just can't use old things willy-nilly, you know. There's still an internal logic that has to be followed. ... We could still cross some lines [if] we think, "Oh, we can do anything now." And a savvy fan will go, "Well, technically, [you can't].

So there in lies the question: Do you pull from a mythology that is so rich, at the risk of inevitably being compared to the original? Or do you go with a completely new story and risk alienating the fans?

But the two aren't in unfamiliar territory. They must have gone through some similar battles when writing Revenge of The Fallen, the upcoming sequel to Transformers.



Now in it's 6th week, Star Trek is head and shoulders above the competition, having grossed over 230 million dollars! It's hard to believe that early projections for the movie weren't good. Kurtzman explains:

Well, you know, it was sort of stunning for us, actually, because ... we did not know how people were going to react to the movie in general. ... The last version of Trek was fairly unsuccessful at the box office... and, in talking to people, there was such a stigma against Star Trek [and] sci-fi: how polarizing it was, it wasn't accessible to women, it was too cold, any number of things that people have to say about it.

So in aiming to make a movie that both reached a broad base and ... satisfied the fans, ...A, we weren't sure we were going to be able to accomplish both, and, B, we just didn't know if people were going to show up. And the tracking for the movie, which we all watch religiously right before the movie comes out, was telling us that the movie was going to do fine but not great.

That must have been rough. I got to see the movie before it came out, and I absolutely loved it. I think most of readers did as well. I knew and felt that it was going to be a hit. Would I have been surprised if it wasn't? Of course. But to be these guys, having put their hearts and souls into this, they must have been crushed to hear that it would just do 'ok'. That's like someone telling you, you're 'ok' in bed. But alas...

The night before the movie came out, literally hours before, there was a 36 percent spike in tracking. It was, like, shocking. And all of a sudden, ... everyone went, "Wow. Now we have no idea what kind of a number we're going to have this weekend." So by Friday night everyone kind of knew where we were going.

Well at least now they have a much better idea of where the fans stand. As for me, I have complete faith that they can pull off another one. In fact I'm already fiending for it. So what do you think? New story? Or jump off one of the TV episodes or movies?

For the rest of the interview click here.