Latest News
1/13/10
William Shatner Howard Stern Interview
Star
Trek star William
Shatner was a guest on the Howard
Stern Radio Show. Relevant excerpts:
Quivers: Are you
lobbying to be in the next [Star Trek]?
Shatner: I wouldn't mind [laughs]
Stern: But you would
have preferred to have been in this first one
Shatner: Of course I would have loved to have been part of this historic event.
But how do you bring back to life this dead...I died my character died.
Stern: He did a great
job with it. And the kid who played you was fabulous. And I can't believe that
you are not going to see this kid who played you.
Shatner: All right. So JJ said to me, he would have a screening at Paramount. I
thought "wow what a glamorous thing." He'll rent the theater, it
seats two or three hundred people, I'll invite my family and friends and we'll
have it catered and we'll all watch. So I haven't done that yet, but I am about
to. In fact, if JJ is listening, and I think he does, JJ get ready, I am going
to take you up on your offer.
Stern: The plot of the
movie does leave it open that you could appear, there are ways for you to be in
this.
Shatner: Well I hope they desperately search them out. But I am very expensive.
11/17/09
William Shatner GQ Interview
GQ Magazine has an extensive feature and
interview with Star Trek star William Shanter and here is an excerpt courtesy of TrekMovie.com:
Here is
what Shatner had to say about his recent meeting with J.J. Abrams "[JJ]'s
so funny. I texted him. He wants to have a meeting with me. He told me a couple
months ago...so, a couple weeks ago I texted, I said "when the f-k is the
meeting, I'm not going to live much longer, and you better have a meeting with
me before I die. And he texted back saying "well, don't die before next
week"
11/18/09
Newsarama Roberto Orci Interview
Newsarama posted a new interview with Star
Trek writer Roberto
Orci. Relevant
excerpt:
Nrama: So, Shatner accepting a Scream Award
for JJ Abrams...does that mean anything? That he might show up in the
sequel?
Orci:
Well, we wrote a scene for him in the first one and I got outvoted in terms of
where it ended up. I'll write another one and we'll see what
happens. [laughs]
10/17/09
William Shatner Canadian Press Interview
The Canadian Press posted a new interview with Star
Trek star William
Shatner.
Regarding an appearance in Star Trek XII, Shatner states: "I think the problem they have is getting the character I played into it, and the physical change I've had in 45 years, and how do you rationalize it in the story - I don't know," he said. "If they should write a decent involvement in the story to what I would do, I would certainly consider it."
10/8/09
IESB/Collider J.J. Abrams Interview
IESB and Collider interviewed Star Trek director J.J. Abrams. Relevant excerpt:
Q: You've said that
the hardest decision for you was to not include William Shatner in the movie.
Are you thinking about putting him in the next movie at all?
Abrams: The Shatner thing comes up quite a bit. As someone who was a William
Shatner fan, in a huge way, just because of The Twilight Zone episodes he did,
and then completely appreciating what he did in Star Trek, but not really
becoming a fan until I started working on this movie, it was a foregone
conclusion that we wanted Shatner in the movie. The problem was that his
character died, on screen, in one of the Trek films, and because we decided,
very early on, that we wanted to adhere to Trek canon, as best we could, which
was a huge challenge, because even the original series, in many ways, didn't
always adhere to Trek canon, the required machinations to get Shatner into the
movie would have been very difficult to do, given the story we wanted to tell,
and also to give him the kind of part that he would be happy with. It was this
thing where it would have felt like a gimmick, in order to get Shatner in the
movie, which would have honestly, to me, been distracting. Having said that,
would it have been fun to have him in the movie? Of course. Would it be great
to work with him? No doubt. I was as excited to work with him, as I was Mr.
Nimoy, who we luckily did have in the film. In terms of moving forward, I am
open to anything. I would love to figure out something, given the challenge of
introducing these new characters and given the burden of having to cast these
people. I feel like the first movie did some of the heavy lifting that needed to
be done, in order to free us to continue, going forward. Maybe there's less of
a burden and there's going to be more opportunity to work with him again. I
would love to work with him. We speak. We actually have a lunch date planned.
I'm a fan. I'm a friend of his. Or, he's at least a friend of mine. He may say
otherwise on his blog today. I have no idea. But, I really couldn't like him
more and would love to work with him.
5/15/09
MTV J.J. Abrams Interview
MTV posted a new interview with Star Trek director J.J. Abrams. Relevant excerpts:
"The fun
of this [new alternate 'Trek' reality] is that the destiny of these characters
is in their hands - it's not constrained by the pre-existing films or TV
series," Abrams explained. "Believe me, whether it's William Shatner or
Khan ... it would be ridiculous to not be open to those ideas."
Regarding Shatner's Kirk, Abrams said
"I wouldn't rule out anything. The point of creating this independent
timeline is to not have the restrictions we had coming into this one. And one
of those restrictions was that Kirk was dead."
"But this all assumes that there's another story that's going to be
told," Abrams cautioned, saying that there's a lot of work to be done
before such ideas can be sorted out. "We're all still coming down from
making this movie."
5/11/09
Orci and Kurtzman Reveal The Originally Planned Shatner Cameo
io9 posted a new interview with Star Trek writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and here are few excerpts.
Did
that [Shatner scene] even get tossed around at all?
Orci: We wrote it, it was in the script.
Kurtzman: The very last scene when Spock and Spock meet each other, finally.
And elder Spock is convincing young Spock that he couldn't interfere, because
it would have diverted [Kirk and Spock] away from their friendship. And that
their friendship is the key to the whole sort of shebang.
Orci: He gave him a recorded message from Kirk.
Kurtzman: He [elder Spock] said, "Don't take my word for it." And he
handed him [younger Spock] a little holographic device and it projected
Shatner. It was basically a Happy Birthday wish knowing that Spock was going to
go off to Romulus, and Kirk would probably be dead by the time...
Orci: It turned into a voiceover, at the end of the movie.
Whew! Well, once again we dodged a bullet. If Shatner had been given a cameo in Star Trek XI, it would NOT have reversed his death in Generations. And he probably wouldn’t have appeared in another film after that. So it’s probably for the best that Shatner didn’t appear in THIS film.