Obsessed With Film

Posted by Will Reynolds

King of movie magazines Empire cornered Tom Cruise on the red carpet at the Lions For Lambs premiere in London and asked him about his rumoured involvement in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. Those who’ve been following the mill will know that original Enterprise skipper Christopher Pike is slated to feature in the film and Cruise’s name has been mentioned in connection with the part.

“What? No, I’m not in that.” said Cruise. “Nope. It’s just rumour.”

There you have it. I don’t think Cruise would be seen dead in a Star Trek movie, let alone one that is backed by Paramount.

I think this new film needs some much needed star power to get bums on seats. JJ Abrams is spending a lot of money on this new version of Star Trek and, as much as I love Abrams, the film just has box office turkey written all over it.

You can get away with a no name cast for things like Spider-Man and Batman because the character is the star of the show… but Star Trek really, really needs that something extra to persuade people to see it. Even if it’s the greatest movie ever made I doubt it’ll break even.

The idea of Matt Damon as Kirk, Adrien Brody as Spock and Gary Sinise as Bones was a lot more tempting to me.

categories - Movie News, Sci-Fi

Further Reading

• Cruise to cameo in Star Trek?

• Josh Lucas is Captain Pike?

• Paramount splits with Tom Cruise

• Tom Cruise dons the eye patch once more for VALKYRIE reshoots

• Tom Cruise is back…. and so is United Artists

6 Comments »

1. “Matt Damon as Kirk, Adrien Brody as Spock and Gary Sinise as Bones”

   That’s an awful cast. The film needs lesser known actors - it’s about the characters…it’s not a star vehicle.

   They’re gonna publicize the hell out of this, I don’t see how it could fail.

   Comment by brian | October 23, 2007

2. Awful how? They’re all good actors. Nobody cares about Star Trek anymore, no-names won’t equal ticket sales.

   They can publicise the hell out of it but ask yourself this: would the general, non-geek audience - the crowd they have to hit to make a profit - be more tempted to see Matt Damon or the guy who was in a Lindsay Lohan movie?

   This movie will struggle to hit £200 million domestic, and I think it needs that for there to be a sequel.

   Comment by Will Reynolds | October 23, 2007

3. Damn. We could have seen Captain Kirk fight Lord Xenu.

   Comment by Professor Chaos | October 23, 2007

4. Good actors, but they’d be distracting as hell. We’d be watching Adrien Brody with ears, not spock.

   Granted, a well-known Kirk wouldn’t hurt, and Matt Damon isn’t a bad idea. But the supporting cast certainly don’t need to be big names. It’d be distracting and a little bit ridiculous.

   Comment by brian | October 23, 2007

5. No way was Cruise ever going to be in this. They have a fairly big name for the villian in Bana. Sometimes not all films need all star casts but they probably need more then Bana as the rest of the cast are fairly unknown.

   Comment by Chris | October 23, 2007

6. To be fair, if there’s one thing about Adrien Brody’s career that I’ve always said about him, is his amazing ability to transform himself into his characters and make us completely forget about his past roles… even though his physical appearance hardly ever changes.

   Brody would have made a great Spock, but this Zachary Quinto guy was born to play this part.

   Gary Sinise I loved as Bones and Damon was Kirk for so long in my head that I’m so dissapointed it wasn’t him.

   Abrams has a great chance here by casting a great actor for the role of Pike because if the movie is the success we all hope it will be… Pike could be spin-off into his own ship, crew and t.v. series without it affecting the film’s cannon.

   Maybe it might be a good idea to not pick a well known actor for this role because they would be far less likely to star in a 24 episode series.

   If these movies are setting up a new continuity, then a t.v. series must be something they are looking towards for the future and Pike as Capt. could be a great way, as Picard says… “to make it so”.

   Comment by Matt Holmes | October 24, 2007

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