Star Trek Sequel Starts in 2010 or 2011?

While at the Empire Awards ceremony this weekend, Simon Pegg (Scotty) provided an update on the sequel, "I bug J.J. on a regular basis and he just fobs me off. But I saw Zoe Saldana recently and she reckons that it’s going to be soon. I would imagine it’ll be toward the end of the year, but I can’t guarantee it."

This has led to speculation that the film could start shooting soon. As TrekMovie.com points out, this seems unlikely and I have to agree. Their sources expect shooting to start next year, possibly in late Spring or early Summer.

The main reason I don't expect the film to be ready for the cameras until next year is simply because the core crew is too busy. Star Trek (and assumed but not confirmed sequel) Director JJ Abrams is ramping up work for Mission: Impossible IV which he is executive producing for a summer 2011 release. Meanwhile the Star Trek sequel writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are working on finishing Fringe Season two, prepping for season three and finishing up their script for Cowboys and Aliens for release next year. Basically with these and other projects they will not have a real gap in their schedule until late this year. At this point I would be surprised if a script exists outside the basic outline stage.

Do to their schedules; I suspect the Star Trek script progress will be a complete outline by beginning of the summer followed by various drafts being produced for the remainder of the year. By December, they will probably find time to work out the scheduling with full pre-production cranking up early in 2011. The goal will probably be to get before the cameras by May 2011 as they will want to provide plenty of buffer for visual effects creation, possible 3D conversion (not yet discussed but it will be a topic by this time next year), and for the promotional swing that Abrams and the writers will have to take for their respective movies coming out that summer.

So long story short, do not expect any real news of the sequel getting before the cameras this summer. With the movie not scheduled until June 29th, 2012 there really isn't any reason to rush the process or any reason to try to get filming started this year.