The ever-evolving tale of William Shatner’s possible return for the third film in the rebooted Star Trek series has taken another strange turn – with Shatner now confirming that he has been in contact with the production.
Trek Movie has the latest twist in the tale worthy of being an M. Night Shyamalan production, with video footage of Shatner himself addressing the topic at the Nashville Comic Con. The actor broached the subject of Star Trek 3 when asked if he had any interest in playing Kirk again. In his response, the actor told a funny story about how Abrams approached him for the first Star Trek reboot, showing him a dummy script that Shatner says "stunk." As we all know, Shatner’s appearance in the first film didn’t pan out, but then the actor then revealed that Abrams recently called again, and said:
"I’m calling, Bill, because the director of the Star Trek movie, the next one, has had an idea where you might be involved in it. So I am calling to see if you would be interested."
Shatner says he’d be interested in Star Trek 3 if the part is "meaningful", which presumably rules out a simple cameo, but added he’d be "delighted" to do it. Abrams apparently swore Shatner to secrecy about it, hence his Twitter denial – which he seems to only be breaking now because the cat is pretty much out of the bag at this point.
The hitch here remains whether or not director Bob Orci and his team can concoct a way to bring both Kirk and Spock – Shatner believes they’re a package deal – back in the new film. Orci apparently has an idea, but will it be meaningful enough to get Shatner back into his tunic? The actor isn’t sure, adding that he has no idea how they’d bring Kirk back all these years later. But he’s obviously interested.
So, what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It appears that Orci and Abrams have ideas about bringing both Nimoy and Shatner back for the new Star Trek, but it’s not a done deal yet. It’s too soon to really guess which way things will go, but if I were a betting man, I’d guess that Shatner is going to be in Star Trek 3.
We’ll keep you up to date as more details emerge in this constantly-evolving drama.
Head over to page 2 to watch the video of William Shatner talking about Star Trek 3 at Nashville Comic-Con!
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