By Steven Zeitchik

Zachary Quinto could be taking a new ride.

The “Star Trek” topliner is loosely attached to his first post-”Trek” feature, the romantic dramedy “Whirligig.”

Quinto would play the lead role in the Canadian indie, which is aiming to shoot early next year.

The actor has been very selective about his next role, and with no deal in place and a number of contingencies that need to be met, it remains possible he’ll opt for another project as his first post-”Trek” feature.

The “Whirligig” project centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman’s adopted son.

By Steven Zeitchik

The news today that Chris Pine had finally taken his first post-Star Trek role resolves a question for a certain segment of the Tiger Beat audience (or whatever the Tiger Beat audience reads instead of Tiger Beat these days). The young (actually, almost 29) actor is taking on a role in a runaway train thriller opposite Denzel Washington. (Yes, you thought John Travolta already did that with next weekend's "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3." But see, this is a _freight_ train. Very different.)

Anyway, this role, in a Fox movie called "Unstoppable," tacks differently than some of the other scripts Pine was considering — another sci-fi actioner, a comedy etc. And he's not taking another lead in a movie with lesser-known actors — he's playing second fiddle in the presence of a big one. In that sense, at least, he's not simply trying to duplicate his success.

After a slew of small TV roles ("Six Feet Under") and marginal roles in marginal films ("Just My Luck"), Pine was always  going to get plenty of exposure in a summer tentpole like "Trek." But he actually showed some surprising range in the movie, getting away from that wooden, dour, pretty-boy style of acting — read: the WB approach — and bringing a certain swagger and depth to the role.

By Steven Zeitchik

Forget all those bad 'boldly going' puns. The real headline in the "Star Trek" take of nearly $77 million this weekend
this weekend is not all the talk about whether it could ultimately beat
"Wolverine" or hold its own against the Catholic Church-loving/baiting
of Angels & Demons next week.

It's this not insignificant fact: a television property has again been successfully revived on the big screen.

It
may at first not seem like such a surprise given how much coin these
built-in brands seem to rake in, but it had been kind of  a while.
Outside of "Charlie's Angels" (first feature installment, 2000) and
"Mission Impossible" (first feature installment, 1997, a franchise
which also had a pic directed by one J.J. Abrams), big screen revivals
of classic television shows could pretty much be counted on to generate
all the excitement of a TV Land marathon. (We don't count
"Transformers," btw.)

In the last fifteen years, theatrical
versions of classic TV shows had gone through several development
renaissances…and just as many box office busts, from the late 90's
adventure remakes ("Lost in Space," The Mod Squad") to the comedy
revival of the mid '00's ("Bewitched," "The Honeymooners").

"Star
Trek" breaks the streak, Remake culture had for the last few years
moved on from 60's and 70's TV shows to 80's and 90's movies
("Robocop," "Red Dawn" et al). This prequel could change that.
In fact, some shows of older vintage are already off the shelf –
"Magnum, P.I." at Universal, "The A-Team" at Fox — and this kind of
bank tends to prompt studios to give them a new polish.

But we
say stay away. "Star Trek" is unique on several levels. The show has
already had more feature iterations than some TV series have episodes.
And some of the success this weekend is as much a function of timing as
it is smart marketing and execution. Paramount
couldn't have known when it moved the release
from Christmas '08 to spring '09 just how ideal this recessionary
period would be for a movie about other times and places — escapism at
its most literal — but it proved to be a masterstroke.

More than
anything, though, Star Trek has been the exception to prove the rule,
consistently showing over forty years that like a certain kind of
distant planet, it can find life no matter who's in it and what
storylines are invented. When they think about remaking pretty much any
other show, though, studio execs would be better off boldly
going where others haven't gone before.

By Steven Zeitchik

The media around the new Star Trek is getting seriously weird. It was odd enough when Paramount worked in a new exclusive scene to the title sequence of “Lost” last week — the name of the show fading not into black but a distant galaxy, with the Enterprise bursing through the ‘O’ in Lost (thanks to THR’s James Hibberd for pointing it out; video and blog item about it as his Live Feed blog).

That, at least, came in a show with similar themes, and there’s a presumption of overlapping fandom between the J.J. Abrams-created television and show J.J. Abrams-directed movie (note the callout to Abrams in the footage).

But then there was this above bit of meta-ness — something certainly not solicited by the studio — in which William Shatner appeared on Access Hollywood so Billy Bush could watch him watch the trailer, in a scene that exactly parallels, say, when the New York Times stops b Harold Bloom’s house to sit with the Shakespeare expert as he reacts to a new rendition of the bard’s work.

Note that Shatner’s reaction to the trailer, shown in real-time via a split screen, goes from quizzical to amused and back again. There’s a running gag about George Takei (possibly) getting a role in the new pic, but that’s not the odd part. The odd part is when Shatner says “Looks great” — and then goes on to say how he really feels.

Turns out Shatner’s written a book that has the same premise at the new pic. “it’s my version of young Jim Kirk and Spock– how they met, what they did, what they were like.” And it turns out — shocker! — the studio didn’t love it.

“I wrote it with the permission of Paramount reluctantly given,” Shatner told Bush, adding for good measure. “I can see why — because my version is not too dissimilar to this.” J.J., hope Kurtzman and Orci are far along on that sequel — a competing spec is on its way.

By Steven Zeitchik

Love, true love — the love kids have for chocolate ice cream and  Harvey Levin has for a celebrity getting off an airplane — is the kind of love that THR critic Ray Bennett feels for the new Star Trek. In his review out of London, he writes that it's basically the chocolate ice cream/Kim Kardashian at LAX of summer tentpoles.

"Paced at warp speed with spectacular action sequences rendered brilliantly and with a cast so expert that all the familiar characters are instantly identifiable, the film gives Paramount Pictures a new lease of life on its franchise."

And the quote sure to make Paramount feel the love: "The film is so much fun…it will draw in moviegoers just looking for a sensational ride."

Bennett gives away few specific plot points — the question of time travel, for example, isn't addressed — but he does describe a young Kirk and Spock at a Starfleet Academy, meeting each other, coming of age, then being rushed to adulthood when a faraway mission calls them to Planet Vulcan. And then back again, for sequel after sequel…

By Steven Zeitchik

Paramount is going hard after young, mainstream audiences for the new Star Trek. That we knew. But hard enough that it's now courting…the Vegas crowd?

The adjacent photo adorns the elevators at the young-ish Planet Hollywood in Sin City — or rather, it is the hotel elevators, and pretty much the one thing, outside the persistent advertising for the burlesque-y new musical-striptease "Peep Show" (Scary Spice, how far you've fallen), that you're bound to run into anywhere you go in the hotel.

Vegas isn't exactly a cinematic hotbed — apologies to Trevor Goth and Cinevegas, noble creatures both — but it is a logical place to advertise a certain kind of pic. Visitors there are already thinking about ways to part with their money, after all, so toss a movie into that heady hedonism cocktail and you just may cinch a few extra ticket sales.

Still, this is as broad a campaign as you can imagine — you don't see many pics simultaneously giving the hard sell to fanboys in Austin and Midwestern couples in casinos.

Vegas is also, it should be said, a place where movie and television culture lives on long after the last print has been sent back to the studio (see photo to the right, where in the Golden Nugget slot-machine area, the Trek of decades past lives on more stubbornly than the Voyager time capsule.)

J.J. Abrams and Co. no doubt can only hope Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are still adorning the quarter-gobblers in 2049…

By Steven Zeitchik

Just hours before its world premiere in Australia and Star Trek is still a matter of national security. Try to elicit info on the plot or even how the actors feel about it and you'll feel like Kirk talking to the Romulans. (Try avoiding news about the Enterprise et al at this time tomorrow and you'll probably be just as successful.)

But actors are finally letting at least a few of their feelings about their parts in the movie slip. Eric Bana, who plays Romulan villain Nero told Risky Biz in an interview last week that in a post-Joker era, being the bad guy isn't easy.

"It was a huge challenge," Bana said. "They're big shoes to fill when you're cast as a villain these days."

While Bana said he can't reveal — his phrase, oft-used — whether he now knows the Romulan language, if his characters jumps around in time or pretty much any other detail that's remotely connected to the movie, the Aussie did note that he hasn't seen the film, that he'll see it for the first time at the premiere down-under and that he'll be part of the barnstorming global tour that begins Tuesday.

"I think we'll need the Starship Enterprise just to get to all these places," he said. And an entire starfleet of reporters and snoopers just to finally unearth some revelations.

By Borys Kit

Anyone who’s been within three miles of a Star Trek episode in the last several decades probably has some feelings about Par’s upcoming reboot. Yesterday the studio and director JJ Abrams did a presentation offering a surprising amount of material about the new film on the Paramount lot. They’ve been on a little Star Trek promo tour, doing one of these things in London and then in NY. Yesterday was L.A.’s turn.

So what went down? They showed the trailer as well as four scenes from the movie. Abrams introduced the new Kirk and Spock, and talked a little about the newest installment in the franchise, which serves as an origin story: it basically tells of how the crew first meet and come together on their first mission.

Judging by the reactions, the presentations are achieving their intended effect. The scenes showcased some good sci-fi, with massive ships, aliens, and high-tech vehicles. They were emotional, thrilling, funny, visceral and had some nice twists on what even laymen of Trek mythology would know. Spock made captain? Kirk the first officer?

One thing that raised some eyberows were the comedy bits, which were a bit broad – Kirk gets bloated hands as a reaction to medication, as well as a numb tongue.It seemed over the top, though perhaps it will work in the larger context. (And as one of the actors told us afterwards, Abrams wanted some levity from some of the fast-paced and relentless nature of the movie.)

The movie doesn’t open until May 2009 but Paramount is already staring to promote it, going where few have gone before — with a trailer six months ahead of the opening.

And for those brave enough to go where (minor) spoilers tread, some descriptions of the footage after the jump.