J.J. Abrams may have stepped down from directing Star Trek Beyond, the third instalment of the sci-fi reboot he began in 2009, but his legacy of supreme secrecy remains strong. Mystery, drama and intrigue have shrouded the highly-anticipated project since it was first announced, but we do know a fair bit more about the entire ordeal now than we did just a few short months ago. In celebration of all the precious trivia in our possession, tabloid! rounded up everything there is to know about the upcoming flick, from new cast members and filming locations to grotesque aliens and hints of the plot.
NAME
Star Trek Beyond
RELEASE DATE
July 8, 2016 — just in time for the franchise’s 50th anniversary! Yes, it’s really been that long since 1966.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
Ah, the elephant in the room. There was a massive creative shift on this title as we said goodbye to directors and writers who shaped the first two films. We know that, for whatever reason, Robert Orci was removed from the project in 2014, and we know that it’s now going to be co-written by Doug Jung and Simon Pegg, who played Scotty in the first two films.
There were rumblings last year that Orci, a Star Trek purist who helped pen the first two films, wrote a script that was too true to the original series.
William Shatner, who spoke at the Middle East Film and Comic Con in Dubai in April, suggested that Orci might have been dismissed for leaking information about the film — including the fact that Abrams had approached Shatner to be in it.
“[JJ] asked me if I’d be interested in being in the films, so I said, ‘Of course, but I want to do something functional.’ He said, ‘Of course, but don’t tell anybody that we’re talking about this,’” said Shatner.
The following day, reporters accosted Shatner about his involvement in the film. Abrams initially assumed that Shatner spilt the beans, but Shatner suggested it might have been Orci. Orci was fired from the production the following week. Coincidence?
Pegg didn’t name names, but said the initial script for Star Trek 3 “wasn’t really working” and that “the studio was worried that it might have been a little bit too Star Trek-y.”
Still, Pegg stated he himself had to “abide by certain rules and do right by the original series”, and had to ensure it wasn’t too postmodern or self-referencing.
“I have to try to take on the spirit of the show, rather than fill it with stuff that people will just go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s from episode something or other.’ It’s more than that,” he added.
CAST
On the cast side of things, we’re going to see a whole lot of familiar faces. Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, Spock and Kirk respectively, have even been signed on for the fourth instalment of the films, according to reports.
Add on to that the returning stars Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), Karl Urban (Bones), John Cho (Sulu) and Pegg (Scotty), and we’ve got a good portion of the family back.
But the biggest news was the addition of British actor Idris Elba, rumoured to be the villain of the flick. Elba let the speculation of his involvement simmer for a while before confirming the news through a promotional fund-raising video.
“Almost everyone was a Trekkie, really, weren’t they?” he said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say I was a hard-core one but I definitely watched that show a million times … Spock was probably my favourite character — and in this one I have some scenes with Zachary Quinto.”
And starring opposite Elba, sources say, will be Indonesian martial artist and actor Joe Taslim. Though he’s not a seasoned actor (IMDB lists six credits for him), Taslim might be recognised as Jaka from The Raid: Redemption, or one of the bad guys, Jah, from Fast & Furious 6.
THE PLOT
All right, so we don’t know much, but Quinto, who recently called the late Leonard Nimoy a “father figure” to him, did hint vaguely at the narrative of the film.
“I think the five-year mission will be a part of this next film in some way … We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic sci-fi series in entertainment history, so it’s inherently an ongoing story. But I do think that we’ll feel some sense of evolution in these characters that’s been building through the first few films,” he said.
The rest of the cast have remained mostly tight-lipped over the production, and with good reason: They didn’t really know what on earth was going on.
“We are quite literally the last people in production to read the script,” admitted Pine.
As for director Justin Lin, he had two words to describe the film: new and fresh.
“The Klingons, Romulans and other species are great, but it’s time to go further. It has been fun to focus on creating whole new worlds and species,” he said.
We got a sneak peek of one gruesome-looking creature, potentially to be featured in the film, in another promotional video uploaded to YouTube. The skin-coloured “alien head”, as Pegg puts it, looks something like a deformed, hornless walrus, made up entirely of wrinkles and folds, stony blue eyes and green whiskers poking out of its every pore. Erm… sign us up?
FILMING LOCATIONS
The biggest news for UAE-based Trekkies was that the crew is be heading into Dubai to film in October. David Ellison, CEO of Skydance productions, even had a chuckle over the idea that Dubai’s landscapes might be good material for an alien planet.
An insider tells us the scale of filming in the UAE will be “huge”.
In the meantime, filming has already kicked off in Vancouver. Saldana and Quinto shared a couple of nondescript Instagram snaps of themselves getting into character, while film crews prepared several locations for filming.
A poster erected at a park dubbed the production “Washington” — a code name — and said filming would take place on-and-off between June 25 and June 30.
Just this week, massive green screens and wooden structures were spotted in the Kent Hangar Field in Vancouver, a location used in films like Tomorrowland, Godzilla and Planet of the Apes.
If that’s not enough, a couple of lucky gals spotted none other than Pine at a Vancouver nightclub, and he was more than happy to pose for some fan pics.
We believe the cast will be there for another couple of months, seeing as contest winners of the aforementioned fund-raiser project (in partnership with Omaze) will be joining them on set in Vancouver in September.
And some 8.000km away from Van City is another interesting filming location — South Korea.
Late last year, the mayor of Seoul took to Facebook to share some exciting — if premature — news.
“Today I met with Jeffrey Chernov, producer of [Star Trek 3], at the Paramount Pictures Studio and agreed to film a portion of the upcoming movie in Seoul,” he wrote.
Whether or not the cast and crew have boldly gone there just yet, we’re yet to find out.
