Damon Lindelof Talks Sequel Title

Star Trek sequel writer and producer Damon Lindelof discussed the sequel with MTV (video below) during the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con. Lindelof spoke about what seems to be the goal of finding a colon-less sequel title along the lines of "The Dark Knight", bridge crew friendship arc and that the gap between movies is "significantly less" then real world three years.

"There have been more conversations about what we’re going to call it than went into actually shooting it at this point. The normal, why can’t you just call it "Star Trek 2" because there is already a Star Trek II. That was the genius of Nolan. There was ‘Batman Begins,’ and now they’re just going to be the ‘Dark Knights’ and not going to have 2′s," It’s hard to do movies without colons. I’m not talking about the colon that’s in my body that I use for digestion…There’s no word that comes after the colon after ‘Star Trek’ that’s cool. Not that ‘Star Trek: Insurrection’ or ‘First Contact’ aren’t good titles, it’s just that everything that people are turned off about when it comes to ‘Trek’ is represented by the colon."

"All those iterations [including not having 'Star Trek' in the title] are bouncing around. I think that we are waiting for that one. This is the hardest thing to do in filmmaking or storytelling is you push past the point where you absolutely have to make a decision and now we are in that zone where Paramount is saying ‘the movie is coming out next May, what’s it going to be?’"

"It was really fun to write the crew this time. In the first one they were all just meeting each other and they get thrown together on this mission. But now they are a crew and these iconic relationships are starting to form, which we just saw hints of before. It is cheesy to say this in a sequel, but watching them become friends is something we have never seen in Trek before. Even in the original series they were already on the five year mission so the idea of learning to trust each other and fighting with each other and not really getting each other yet, particularly the dynamic between Kirk and Spock. Those guys being two halves of the same whole is just a really great relationship between two male characters that I have not seen anywhere outside of Trek."

I think they are just going to have to live with the colons. The Dark Knight works because that phrase has been associated with the character for decades and even if don't know it; a poster with the title quickly clears up any confusion because "Dark Knight" can only represent so many things. Star Trek just doesn't have the same word association possibilities. The best I can come up with is "Red Shirt", "Phaser", "Federation of Planets" and "Enterprise". Since Enterprise was used for the TV series, that is out so not really left with a whole lot to work with. The Karl Urban references in video are related to Urban possibly leaking the title of the villain but a later goofy surfing video indicates the actor was having fun with fans.