With J.J. Abrams' 'Star Trek' reboot tearing up the DVD charts this week and talks about another entry in the franchise underway, the online rumor mill is hitting warp speed about what the 'Untitled Star Trek Sequel' might be. Though there's no script and no casting yet, and though Abrams hasn't even committed to directing the film, ComingSoon.net is stoking speculations that the most famous Trek villain -- Khan, forever immortalized by Ricardo Montalban in the 1967 'Star Trek' episode 'Space Seed' and the 1982 feature 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' -- will be reincarnated in the next outing.
So if Abrams does return and Khan is the villain, who would play the chest-baring baddie? ComingSoon says they're hearing a "pretty juicy rumor" that the studio and director's top choice is Nestor Carbonell, who plays Richard Alpert on the ABC series'Lost,' which just so happend to be executive produced by Abrams.
Carbonell is a solid TV actor who has made some forays into feature films, including 2008's 'The Dark Knight.' He can play enigmatic ('Lost') and nasty (he was an assassin in 2006's 'Smokin' Aces'), two characteristics Khan exhibited in his battles with Captain Kirk. And he has the look (imagine him in a 1980s mullet), the eyebrows and intonations that could make him the spitting image of a younger Montalban.
But is this a good idea? Though some Trekkies hoped that Abrams' 'Star Trek' would be a remake of the original, the producer-director-writer instead rechanneled the characters and situations into his own vision. And we're not sure that vision would include a carbon-copy Khan.
ComingSoon offered a caveat for their rumor: "There are way too many variables right now, including the fact that the Khan character may not even be in the sequel. We just know that if they started filming today, he would be their man."
Well, there's time to worry about all this. According to Abrams, the sequel won't hit theaters until 2012. What would Khan say about all this? "Let them eat static."
Reader Comments (1)
GeorgeMason72 at 7:40PM on Dec 18th 2009
IF this is true I think this could be a really awesome casting job. Why would the 80's mullet look even be considered? That made sense in 1982 to be all 80's edgy. The original incarnation, which I saw only recently, was clean cut. Khan is supposed to be genetically superior so whatever look that conveys that would be for the best and I'm sure JJ Abrams would do an awesome job with the character and maybe enlighten us on his backstory without succumbing to the anchor of past continuity.