Simon Pegg ‘Nerds Out’ Over Roberto Orci Directing Next ‘Star Trek’ Film

Simon Pegg has said that Roberto Orci taking over directing duties (as reported by Variety last May) on the new Star Trek film from J.J. Abrams “makes perfect sense.”

Before the news broke that Roberto Orci would be directing the latest film version of the classic 60s television science fiction series, Simon Pegg told the BBC earlier today that Orci emailed him:

“He emailed me before the news broke saying: ‘Hey man, I might be doing this, shall we nerd out?'”

Simon Pegg added that he and Orci are very good friends.

Roberto Orci has never directed a film before, so being handed the keys to the starship-sized third film of the popular series reboot could be daunting to the Mexican-born writer. But that’s not to say Orci hasn’t been around movies before. He has screenwriting credits on the Transformers films and Mission Impossible III, and he co-wrote the first two Star Trek reboot films with J.J. Abrams, the director of those films. Abrams isn’t directing the third Star Trek film, of course, because he’s busy in another part of the Sci-Fi Fanboy Galaxy shooting Star Wars Episode VII.

Roberto Orci is writing the third installment of the rebooted Star Trek series with J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay.

Simon Pegg, who will reprise his role of the USS Enterprise’s Engineering Chief, Montgomery Scott, (made famous in the original series and films by James Doohan), says that Orci is a part of the Star Trek family.

“Bob’s been there since the first ‘Star Trek’ — by that I mean the 2009 one — so it seemed to make perfect sense that he come in as a director on this one because he gets it. He was always the most Trekkie of those guys anyway, he’s always understood the story the best so it’s great that he’s going to be involved in the writing and directing.”

J.J. Abrams will continue to be involved with the film, Simon Pegg added. Mainly, because Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot, is making the third Star Trek film.

In addition to Simon Pegg as Mr. Scott, the other central actors are presumed to be returning as well. That would include Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Karl Urban as Bones, John Cho as Mr. Sulu, and Anton Yelchin as Chekov.

The as-yet untitled Star Trek 3 featuring Simon Pegg with Roberto Orci behind the camera, is slated for 2016 release.

[Image via Bob Canada’s Blogworld]