Star Trek 3 to veer closer to spirit of original TV show, says Simon Pegg

The next Star Trek film will be closer in spirit to the original television show, according to co-writer Simon Pegg.

In a conversation with Comic Book Resources, Pegg revealed that he hopes to inject an element of Apollo-era optimism into Star Trek 3, which will be the first new film in the long-running space saga since the death of original Spock Leonard Nimoy and is rumoured to be starring Idris Elba as the main villain.

“I think we just want to take it forward with the spirit of the TV show,” revealed Pegg, who is currently promoting darkly comic crime thriller Kill Me Three Times. “And it’s a story about frontierism and adventure and optimism and fun, and that’s where we want to take it, you know. Where no man has gone before – where no one has gone before, sensibly corrected for a slighter more enlightened generation. But yeah, that’s the mood at the moment.”

Pegg, who will also return as engineering chief Scotty in Star Trek 3, said he was brought on board to write the screenplay following conversations with Star Trek executive producer JJ Abrams, director of the first two films, and producer Bryan Burk.

“It just came out of conversations I was having with JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk, and they decided to kind of like restart the process,” said Pegg. “Because I’d been on the set with Burky on Mission: Impossible, he said, ‘Maybe you should come on and write it’ ... And I was a bit, ‘No. I don’t want to — it’s too much pressure!’”

Star Trek 3 will be directed by Fast Five’s Justin Lin, with Abrams having jumped ship to take charge of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The new instalment has experienced a troubled pre-production process, with original writer-director Roberto Orci sidelined in December in favour of Lin.

The original Captain Kirk, William Shatner, had been rumoured to be making a cameo in the new film, but it is not clear if he has been retained for the Pegg-Lin iteration. Star Trek 3 hopes to hit cinemas in July 2016 in time for the 50th anniversary of the original TV series.

News that Pegg plans to reinfuse the film series with the show’s optimistic outlook may provide solace for long-term fans, known as Trekkies, who have lambasted the otherwise popular Abrams movies. Second instalment Star Trek Into Darkness was voted the worst Star Trek film in the entire canon by delegates to the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas in 2013.