Simon Pegg On Writing Star Trek 3

It looks as though writing ‘Star Trek 3’ is quite the responsibility… as Simon Pegg reveals the pressure of tackling the ‘Star Trek’ franchise.

During an interview with Collider, the 45-year-old actor revealed what it’s like to be writing the next ‘Star Trek’ movie.

“Terrifying,” he said. “On set, sometimes, there’s room for improvisation, especially for someone like Scotty who’s Scottish, but never anything more than little dialogue tweaks, here and there. Now it’s like, ‘Okay, now you’ve got to write the dialogue.’ It’s scary!”

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Of course, it doesn’t help that the film is working to such a tight deadline… and after the exit of previous writer Roberto Orci, it seems they have a lot of ground to make up.

“The timeframe we’re working in is extremely tight,” he explained. “It means we’re having to come up with the goods. We can’t be lazy about it. We can’t procrastinate. We have to come up with the stuff because the production is hammering on the door saying, ‘When can we build this? What are we gonna we build? Who is in it?’ I don’t know! Let’s write it and we’ll find out. It’s an interesting process.”

Obviously, ‘Star Trek’ fans will be more familiar with Simon Pegg’s acting roles – having played USS Enterprise Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in the rebooted franchise. And it seems he owes an awful lot to the folks at Bad Robot.

“I owe J.J. [Abrams] and Bryan an awful amount,” he said. “I love those guys. I want to do right by them, so I felt like I should man up and do it.”

“Me and Bryan Burk, who’s one of the producers at Bad Robot, have worked together on a bunch of stuff. We were sitting around, talking about the direction the next film was gonna go in. They were thinking, “Maybe we should go back to the drawing board, a little bit, with the screenplay.” Bryan and I would just sit around and talk, and we’d get excited. And then, Bryan was like, “Do you want to write it then?” It was a difficult decision. I hemmed and hawed about it, a little bit, because it felt like a big responsibility.”

So how will Smon Pegg approach the new film? It seems he’s being careful not to overdo the fan service… and that’s probably a good thing.

“I’m walking into a realm that doesn’t belong to me, and I have to treat it with a degree of respect,” he said. “Obviously, I always treat things with respect, but I have to abide by certain rules and do right by the original series, and not be too post-modern with it and not be too aware of itself. I have to try to take on the spirit of the show, rather than fill it with stuff that people will just go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s from episode something or other.’ It’s more than that.”

Of course, he doesn’t have too long to turn the script around… and with shooting due to begin soon, it seems he has until June to finish the script.

“I’m busy writing it,” he said. “It’s an ongoing thing. I’m sure we’ll be finessing it, right through the shoot. You never really, truly start writing a movie until the edit.”

‘Star Trek 3’ heads to cinemas on 8 July 2016

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Picture Credit: Paramount Pictures