As J.J. Abrams prepares to unleash his latest directorial effort Super 8 (and a pox on my colleagues who were lucky enough to screen it over the weekend), word swirls that the creature feature about small-town friends tracking an escaped alien hearkens back to Steven Spielberg’s early days, when he cranked out popcorn thrillers like Close Encounters and E.T..

But the guys over at TrekMovie.com have no interest in that. As you can tell by their site’s name, their focus is breaking news regarding the follow-up to Abrams’ fantastically entertaining Star Trek reboot, and today, they posted a doozy of an update. Trek co-writer Robert Orci confirmed in the site’s comments section that Abrams “is still working” with the writers on their script, and “hoped” that he will return to direct the sequel.

“Just been waiting for JJ to be free to really decide if he likes the story and hear his suggestions before we finish the script,” Orci wrote. “Once he says go, we’ll have it in no time. Meanwhile, our outline is detailed enough (70+ pages!) to do some prep :)”

It sounds like Abrams is keeping his fingers deep in the Star Trek sequel pot, which is great news for fans of the series and devotees of well-orchestrated summer movie escapism. Chances are Abrams officially will dive into the sequel once his Super 8 commitments are behind him. You don’t make a 70-plus page outline for a project you are ready to hand off to someone else. We won’t know for sure until Abrams confirms it, but it appears he’s going to climb back into the captain’s chair for another Star Trek, which Paramount still, perhaps optimistically, has slated for a June 29, 2012 release.