STAR TREK 3 Lands Two New Writers And Release Date Expected For 2016

By Christopher M on Saturday, December 7th, 2013

Roberto Orci is a busy screenwriter he’s helping Sony develop their Spider-Man universe writing Amazing Spider-Man 2, Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 4. His writing partner Alex Kurtzman helped Orci pen Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness (with Damon Linelof), but won’t be around for Star Trek 3 as the writer has exited the project. We know that Trek producer J.J. Abrams has been involved with creating the story for the film. Now there is word via THR that Orci will have two other writers help him write the script, those will be J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. The pair are best known for recently taking on scripting duties for Bad Robot’s film adaptation of graphic novel Boilerplate.

The film is looking to be released just in time for the franchise’s 50th Anniversary in 2016. X-Men Apocalypse, Amazing Spider-Man 3, Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and two untitled films from Marvel Studios are all set to be released in that same year, making it quickly becoming almost as crowded as the 2015 slate. It’s expected that Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Alice Eve, Simong Pegg, Jon Chu and Karl Urban will all be reprising their roles in the third installment. My assumption is that if the release date is aiming for 2016, new writers just being assigned and a director isn’t locked-in we won’t be seeing the production take place in early 2014, which had been the rumor for months.

I’m sure some are a little upset that J.J. Abrams has exited to focus on Star Wars: Episode VII but his departure has allowed Attack The Block‘s Joe Cornish to step-up to the plate as a strong-candidate to direct, possibly giving us a massive visual science-fiction spectacle. Details of the plot have been kept underwraps like with all Bad Robot projects, while there have been hints it will focus on the crew taking-on their exploration mission, perhaps having them clash with the Klingons at the edge of a war with The Federation.