Joe Cornish No Longer Involved With STAR TREK 3 Will Rupert Wyatt Replace Him?

There is word via Variety that Joe Cornish won’t be involvement with Paramount and Skydance’s Star Trek 3, details are scarce but it’s possible that the news of new writers might be a reason. Cornish is known for his writing skills and wrote his directorial debut Attack The Block along with co-writing Marvel’s Ant-Man with it’s director Edgar Wright, so having him on board and not taking advantage of his writing skills would be odd. Paramount recently hired J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to co-write (with J.J. Abrams providing the story) the third installment with Roberto Orci. Joe was being eyed to direct the film but was never confirmed by the studio or producer J.J. Abrams, he was apparently among a list of possible contenders.

Trek 3‘s possible 2016 release date is far enough away that the studio has plenty of time to consider other directors, but it’s possible J.J. will want to get someone before production on Star Wars: Episode VII begins. Before it looked like Cornish was a lock for the sequel LatinoReview reported that Jon M. Chu (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) as being looked at to direct, while Collider mentioned Rupert Wyatt (Rise of The Planet of The Apes) as a front-runner. Chu is still attached to direct G.I. Joe 3 which is currently being scripted by Evan Daugherty (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), LR would later retract their report on Jon’s involvement. Other names rumored included Fast And Furious franchise director Justin Lin who is directing the next Bourne installment and Brad Bird (Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) who is currently shooting Disney’s Tomorrowland.

I wouldn’t rule out Rupert Wyatt being still involved since he’s been bouncing around projects lately and was endorsed by Abrams via HitFix. The only problem is that Wyatt attached himself to direct Mark Wahlberg and Brie Larson (in-talks) in the remake of The Gambler, however it’s possible that Star Trek 3 might not even shoot until mid-late 2014 or early 2015 giving him a window to make Gambler first.

He’s incredibly talented, and we’d be lucky to have someone as talented as Rupert. But there are things we’re focusing on right now before the director, which is just sort of the fundamentals of where the story is gonna go.

SOURCE: VARIETY