‘Star Trek 3’: J.J. Abrams Endorses Rupert Wyatt To Direct

For Star Trek 3, former director J.J. Abrams says that Rupert Wyatt would make a fine replacement.

This news comes in the wake of how long it’s taken already to develop Star Wars Episode VII, meaning that J.J. Abrams may not be available to direct the next film in the new Star Trek series. Apparently he’s very aware of this and has stated that he won’t mind fellow director Rupert Wyatt taking over the helm.

Rupert Wyatt was the director behind the surprisingly good prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, giving a classic the needed touch of respect that the Mark Wahlberg film didn’t seem to have. If anyone could handle the next Star Trek in the absence of its previous director, it might as well be someone who has done something similar before.

The Star Trek veteran told Hitflix about his rumored replacement for Star Trek 3, “I know Rupert and he’s incredibly talented, and we’d be lucky to have someone as talented as Rupert. But there are things we’re focusing on right now before the director, which is just sort of the fundamentals of where the story is gonna go.”

In other words, before Paramount Pictures puts anyone in charge of filming for Star Trek 3, they need to figure out where the story is going to go from here. It may be too predictable to roughly follow the plot of the original Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, seeing as the last one introduced Khan, though a new war with the Klingons may be the focus. Of course, that’s all speculation.

J.J. Abrams continued on his experiences with the franchise, “I plan to be involved in the story, and producing the film. I feel very blessed to be involved at all. This film ends with the beginning of the five-year mission, so we would be following that. It’s too early to be discussing details, but there are some really exciting ideas about what comes next.”

We can only hope that J.J. Abrams’ successful resurrection of Star Trek doesn’t end with Star Trek 3.