Chris Pine Will Play Kirk In New Trek Movie

That's him on the immediate left next to Shatner. The rest of the cast is also in place.



Zachary Quinto, the bad guy from Heroes, will play Spock. Karl Urban - the guy who played Eomer in the Lord of the Rings movies -- will play McCoy. Simon Pegg of Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame will play Scotty. John Cho (star of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and the upcoming Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) will play Sulu.

Although the casting looks to be pretty solid, I still think there is a good chance this movie will suck. I was under the initial impression that the film was going to be about Kirk and Spock's final days in the Academy -- followed by their first space mission together as junior officers -- and I thought that might be interesting. But now it sounds like it will be set aboard the Enterprise and Kirk will be the captain.

I hope I'm wrong and the movie turns out to be good, but I just think that the whole Star Trek concept has run out of steam. What they should do instead is let the franchise rest for about a decade and then return with a television series set about 100 years later than Next Generation.

Maybe they could do a series where the Federation is destroyed and the survivors of the last starship -- Enterprise -- lead a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest to find a new home (or something like that).