Director/producer/other stuff-er JJ Abrams has mentioned the next Star Trek film in an interview. As you all know when someone says anything about a forthcoming sci-fi or superhero film, it’s our duty as a blog to report the same story as everybody else regardless of how little information we are actually conveying.

Your job, as drooling fanboys, is to then get all excited/angry about what we write.

Abrams mentioned in an interview that he’s going to start working on the sequel to his 2009 Star Trek re-boot, presumably after he’s finished his promotional obligations for his latest film Super 8.

The film is currently scheduled for a release next summer. When pressed on this matter by a more prestigious news broadcaster Abrams said:

“I’m not so sure, but I know that we’re trying, we’re working on the script and story and doing everything we can to make it well,”

before continuing with the superficially re-assuring but essentially meaningless

“I would just so much rather make a movie that’s worth people’s time than make a movie that’s on time.”

Hopefully Abrams will keep the best things about the first film (the terrific score, atmosphere, smart script and funny bits with Simon Pegg), and with a bit of luck, Kirk won’t just be a total dick this time. Did anyone else leave the cinema scratching their head that it seems all you have to do to become captain of the federation’s flagship is to just act like an impetuous, narcissistic ballbag? But that’s OK because he’s a maverick. We can tell this because HE RIDES A MOTORBIKE.

The fortunate thing about a long wait between the films is that the cast might actually look like grown-ups by then.

Oh and here’s a trailer for Super 8, which could go either way…

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So Tom Cruise is going to make Mission: Impossible 4. Let’s get all the obvious gags out of the way now, shall we?

Hey, what’s the impossible mission this time? Reviving Tom Cruise’s career? Ha. Finding Tom Cruise a decent haircut? Ha. Trying to convince the world that Tom Cruise isn’t a boggle-eyed religious fanatic? Ha. Making Tom Cruise the size of a normal human being? Ha. Getting Tom Cruise to convincingly marry a woman? Ha. Trying to get Tom Cruise to promote a movie without making an overwhelming arsehole of himself? Haaaa.

Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

Let’s have a quick quiz. What was your favourite part of any of the last three Mission: Impossible movies? It’s a difficult question, huh? There are just so many moments to choose from. Like in the first Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise, you know, did that thing that we can’t really remember very well. Or in Mission: Impossible 2, where Tom Cruise was all like “Aargh” for reasons that seem to elude us. Or what about Mission: Impossible 3, which might have been partly set in China unless we’re thinking of another film. Classics, the lot of them.

Or at least we’re assuming they’re classics. All of them were so massively forgettable from start to finish that we usually need to be reminded who everyone is, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and why we agreed to watch them doing it every 20 minutes or so. The world needs another Mission: Impossible movie like it needs to be liked in the jaw by a horse.

So the good news is that there’s going to be another Mission: Impossible movie and Tom Cruise is involved and everything. AP reports:

Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams have chosen to accept another impossible mission. Cruise and Abrams have signed on to produce a fourth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise for Paramount. Abrams directed Cruise’s last outing as covert operative Ethan Hunt in 2006′s “Mission: Impossible III.”

It’s slightly shocking news, isn’t it? Not because Sumner Redstone famously booted Tom Cruise from Paramount after his reputation as a babbling religion-zonked lunatic stopped just about everyone from watching it, but because it just shows how desperate Tom Cruise is to be liked again.

Because, up until now, Tom Cruise’s career rehabilitation has been going horribly. Lions For Lambs was a dreary misfire and Valkyrie did the impossible and made the star of an anti-Hitler movie even less popular than Hitler in Germany. And now he’s returning to his past in an effort to reclaim his former glory. Which would be good, except that the part of his past that he’s decided to return to is the crappy part that’s sort of a sub-Bourne James Bond rip-off that nobody is really that interested in seeing.

But still, on the plus side Tom Cruise will be approaching 50 by the time Mission: Impossible 4 comes out, so at least there’s a decent chance that he’ll throw his back out while leaping around on Oprah Winfrey‘s furniture to promote it. And that’s something we’d happily watch.

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Do you want the good news or the bad news? OK, the good news. Star Trek is the first Star Trek movie in ages that’s any good.

The bad news? The bad news is that, because Star Trek is the new number one movie at the weekend box office, Simon Pegg is doomed to spend the rest of his life answering impenetrable questions from stinking spods while harbouring a festering resentment towards Chris Pine’s growing messiah complex.

But still, Star Trek is the new weekend box office movie and that’s good. They’ll get to shout “KHAAAAAN!” in the next one.

Of course Star Trek is the top movie at the weekend box office. Of course it is. It hasn’t just picked up some of the best reviews of the year so far, but it’s also been directed by JJ Abrams who understands how these things should work.

True, based on his work on Lost, it means that the next five Star Trek sequels will get sillier and more incomprehensible and Jim Robinson from Neighbours will somehow become a leading character and there’ll be a bloody statue that pops up from nowhere and Rose and Bernard will just disappear without explanation and WHY WON’T ANYONE SAY WHERE ROSE AND BERNARD WENT, HUH? Where did they go? You bastard.

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - Star Trek (Not really a trek, though, is it? Make it more like a trek next time, Abrams. Sensible walking shoes and Ordinance Survey maps and flasks of orange juice and inescapable boredom please) $72,500,000

2 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Note to online pirates: if any of you plan on leaking any more summer blockbusters to the internet weeks before its release date, could you please make the next one a good one? Thanks, love hecklerspray) $27,000,000

3 - Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past (Why are they all ghosts? Because they killed themselves. They killed themselves because Matthew McConaughey was their boyfriend and he’s a massive turdface. That’s why) $10,450,000

4 - Obsessed (It’s great that Beyonce is in a film called Obsessed, because people really are obsessed with her. It’s why the other two members of Destiny’s Child are about to star in a film called Vague And Constantly Diminishing Awareness Of Your Existence) $6,600,000

5 - 17 Again (Narrowly edging out Next Day Air, the new movie starring that person from Scrubs. No, not that person from Scrubs. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. That one) $4,405,000

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William Shatner brings a sparkle of class to whatever he touches, whether it's TV work, movies or inexplicable covers of Elton John songs sung between three different William Shatners – but the new Star Trek movie won't see any of that.

And that's because William Shatner won't be in the new Star Trek movie. Although he was rumoured to have a cameo in the movie alongside Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner has revealed that meetings with the new Star Trek director JJ Abrams were unsuccessful and the movie will go ahead sans Shatner. And now William Shatner can't stop bitching about the Star Trek snub. But can you blame him? After all, we'd be bitter if our derided egomaniacal role in a TV show that hasn't been made for almost 40 years wasn't reprised in a movie that's set several years before the TV show we starred in 40 years ago, too. Or something. Oh look, we've confused ourselves now.

If everything goes to plan, the new Star Trek movie will start shooting this week. And a lot of people are finding it very exciting, mainly thanks to the involvement of JJ Abrams – the man behind Lost and the person you need to blame when you realise that all the Klingons in the new movie have been replaced with polar bears and angry wafts of smoke. JJ Abrams has put an interesting cast together for his new Star Trek movie – the baddie from Heroes will be Spock and an unknown actor will be Captain Kirk and Eric Bana will be the villain, which all sounds good, but Scotty will be played by Simon Pegg and Sulu by John Cho from Harold And Kumar Get The Munchies, which makes us worry that JJ Abrams wants to turn Star Trek into some kind of red-font stoner comedy.

But one person who won't get to be in the new Star Trek is William Shatner, a man who has possibly given more to Star Trek than anyone else over the years. He was in the Star Trek TV series, the Star Trek animated series, seven Star Trek films (included one he directed), four Star Trek videogames and has written nine Star Trek books. William Shatner is so dedicated to Star Trek that he's even able to piss out dilithium crystals at will. But meetings with JJ Abrams haven't gone well and the rumoured Star Trek cameo from William Shatner isn't going to happen any more, as the Associated Press reports:

The original Capt. Kirk is disheartened he won't get to boldly go anywhere with his old pal Spock in the new "Star Trek" movie. While Leonard Nimoy is reprising his role as the pointy-eared Vulcan in next year's science-fiction flick, William Shatner is not on board as Kirk. "I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me," Shatner, 76, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I thought, what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision."

Maybe it was a clash of egos that kept William Shatner from getting a role on Star Trek, or maybe science hasn't advanced enough to build the gargantuan man-corset Shatner would need to squeeze into his Starfleet uniform again. We just don't know – all we know is that William Shatner will be nowhere to be seem when Star Trek is released next Christmas.

Maybe it's for the best, though. After all, if William Shatner can't get a role on Star Trek then none of the other original cast members are likely to get a shot either. And, if nothing else, at that will save people the hassle of trying to get Scotty's ashes down from that mountain again.  

Read more:

Shatner's Kirk Not Aboard For New Trek - Associated Press