Star Trek Sequel Gets The Greenlight

Variety is reporting that in a huge sign of confidence on the success of the upcoming movie, Paramount Pictures has decided to move forward on the sequel.

The writing pair of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers I and II) will be joined by longtime Abrams' coworker Damon Lindelof in penning the sequel. The trio will also get producing credit while Abrams stays on as executive producer. Whether JJ Abrams will return as director has not yet been decided. The goal is to have a script ready by Christmas so can have the sequel ready for theatres for a summer 2011 release.

"There's obviously a lot of hubris involved in signing on to write a sequel of a movie that hasn't even come out yet," said Lindelof, co-creator with Abrams of ABC's "Lost" who produced the upcoming "Trek" but did not contribute to Orci and Kurtzman's screenplay. "But we're so excited about the first one that we wanted to proceed."

"Obviously we discussed ideas, but we are waiting to see how audiences respond next month," he said. "With a franchise rebirth, the first movie has to be about origin. But with a second, you have the opportunity to explore incredibly exciting things. We'll be ambitious about what we'll do."

Abrams Extends Paramount Deal

Paramount Pictures and JJ Abram's production company Bad Robot have extended their contract through to 2013. The provides the studio with a first-look relationship for any projects Abrams and Bad Robot is working on. For Bad Robot, this means funding to work on those ideas such as Paramount's recent purchase of the film rights to "The World's Biggest Diamond Heist" the Abrams may direct.

"Today's announcement is meaningful to me in many ways," said Brad Grey, Chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures Corporation. "Bad Robot was one of the first deals we made to help rebuild the studio. J.J. has since become part of the fabric of Paramount and we look forward to continuing our fruitful creative collaboration for many years to come."

"Bad Robot has had an incredibly fun and productive collaboration with Paramount," added Abrams. "We are all so grateful for their amazing support and creative team, and feel like we're just getting started. We are thrilled that we get to stay right where we are."

Abrams Plans A Diamond Heist

Dark Horizon is reporting that Paramount Pictures has bought film rights to "The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist" for JJ Abrams to potentially direct. The story is by Joshua Davis that appeared in Wired Magazine.

"The film will follow the true story of an unprecedented $100+ million diamond & gold heist in Belgium in early 2003 by a small group of Italian thieves who circumvented ten layers of security to access a vault beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center."

The movie will be produced by Abrams' Bad Robot company and currently no writer is attached nor is there a release date. Actually it isn't even 100% that Abrams will direct as he has multiple irons in the fire (Fringe, Star Trek, Morning Glory, etc).

Cloverfield 2 Still Possible

At a Star Trek panel at Wondercon '09, JJ Abrams confirmed that Cloverfield 2 is still on his radar.

Abrams was asked about CLOVERFIELD 2 and he said that the key to doing it was to make sure they were doing it because they have a creative need to do it and not make it as a business decision. They’re toying around with a couple ideas right now and he said if they lock it down and they’re as excited about it when they do as they are now then it’d happen. Right now, all he’d say is that the idea, if it comes to fruition, is “something that would be connected to Cloverfield.”