Simon Pegg Co-Writing Star Trek 3

So, Simon Pegg is co-writing the third film in the rebooted Star Trek franchise with Doug Jung. That is certainly a thing that is happening that may be good or bad.

Honestly I’m not sure what to say about this. On the one hand, I liked the first film in the new Star Trek franchise, but Star Trek Into Darkness was a dumb, melodramatic, boring, and ultimately pointless movie that played with dark tones but ended up being as dumb and emotionally tone deaf as Man of Steel. On the other hand, Pegg is a talented writer and comedian, as evidenced by his work with Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) and his previous appearances in Star Trek, but I’m not entirely sure if he’s right for this project. True, Simon would probably add much better character dialogue and banter than has been present in previous entries (particularly Into Darkness) but I haven’t seen him do anything super serious that wasn’t tinged with a fair bit of comedy. I guess it depends on what tone they decide to settle on for the films (if they ever manage to decide that) but if they decide to continue the serious route then this might be a poor decision. If it tilts towards lighter tone, then fine. This writing choice is perfect.

Unfortunately this is still tied to Paramount Productions, who clearly don’t give a crap about the franchise and are just pushing it for the cash. So, that might work against it too.

Still, Pegg has enough leeway with Star Trek geeks and geeks in general and he is so talented at mixing comedy into serious material, that this news leaves me somewhat optimistic for Star Trek 3, particularly now that Abrams isn’t directing it. At the very least I won’t go blind from lens flares.

Source: Deadline