Paramount Wants STAR TREK 3 To Be Less "Star Trek-y"
Simon Pegg made a lot of headlines earlier this week with his state of the union speech about geek culture, but buried beneath all of that is a small update on Paramount's new Star Trek film that Pegg is starring in and co-writing, which may or may not be titled Star Trek Beyond. (He said that was the title, but in the same piece he also said that Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton are playing Stormtroopers in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so he may not have been entirely serious. As far as I know, the studio has yet to officially confirm the title.)
Speaking with The Radio Times (via The Guardian), Pegg mentioned that the studio brought him on as a writer because they weren't pleased with the previous draft:
"They had a script for Star Trek that wasn't really working for them. I think the studio was worried that it might have been a little too Star Trek-y."
In all likelihood, that was Roberto Orci's script that he was initially going to direct before they brought in Fast Five helmer Justin Lin to replace him in the director's chair. Pegg continued:
"Avengers Assemble, which is a pretty nerdy, comic-book, supposedly niche thing, made $1.5 billion dollars. Star Trek: Into Darkness made half a billion, which is still brilliant. But it means that, according to the studio, there's still $1 billion worth of box office that don't go and see Star Trek. And they want to know why.
People don't see it being a fun, brightly coloured, Saturday night entertainment like the Avengers. [So they want to] make a western or a thriller or a heist movie, then populate that with Star Trek characters so it's more inclusive to an audience that might be a little bit reticent."
It stands to reason that Paramount would want to cash in these films as much as they possibly can, and with an apathetic-to-negative general consensus about Star Trek Into Darkness, it makes sense that they'd be looking to make the movie more accessible. As others have pointed out, this might not be as bad as it sounds; the original Star Trek TV series was very much a mish-mash of genres that included a number of extremely high-concept episodes placing the crew in a variety of ridiculous situations. Gene Roddenberry's original pitch for the show was a space western, so while it may seem like there's cause for alarm on the surface, in actuality I think the studio may be onto something here.
As long as they can keep the fun, adventurous spirit alive, I'm all for seeing Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, and the rest of the cast move in and out of whatever genres Pegg can come up with. What do you think?