Last season, Heroes introduced Star Trek alumnus George Takei in the role of Kaito Nakamura, father of the time-traveling Hiro Nakamura. During this season’s premiere, however, they killed him off. Bummer. But two other Trek alumni have entered the season 2 cast: Dominic Keating, formerly Malcolm Reed on Enterprise, showed up as some sort of Irish bad guy associated with the criminal group that found an amnesiac Peter Petrelli, and classic Trek’s Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, appeared near the end of this week’s episode as D. L. Hawkins’s mother.

And, as you know, Heroes’s big bad from season 1, Zachary Quinto (Sylar), will be playing Spock next Christmas. Now the rumor is that Chris Pine—sounds almost like “Chris Pike,” doesn’t it?—is in negotiations to play Kirk. A couple of days ago, Eric Bana (Bruce Banner from The Hulk and Hector in Troy) was confirmed in the role of the lead villain, apparently named Nero, whose species has not yet been confirmed.

In other Trek news, scriptwriter Roberto Orci has confirmed that the film will focus (as it should!) on Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. We have confirmed casting for Spock, Uhura, Chekov, and a major villain; we know Kirk and McCoy will be in the movie, and casting possibliities for Scotty have been rumored as well. The film is scheduled to start filming in November and should premiere on Christmas Day 2008. What a great Christmas present!

The remastered version of the popular classic Star Trek episode “The Menagerie”—an episode that wrapped the original Star Trek pilot into the classic series that actually aired—will be screened in theaters on November 13, 2007. Click here to learn more, or click here to find a particpating theater near you. It’s one showing only, so plan ahead!

Just in case you don’t remember:

If you recall, the two-part “Menagerie” is the only episode to feature the casts of both the original pilot and the regular series, with Spock the only character to make the transition from from the pilot to the series. Much of the footage, of course, is taken from the rejected first pilot “The Cage.” The story sees the Vulcan hell-bent on returning Captain Pike to Talos IV, the intention being that this is where his injured former commander can peacefully live out the rest of his days. Spock risks his career in Starfleet by hijacking the Enterprise and faces a court-martial for his actions. All this is eventually revealed to be an illusion, courtesy of the Talosians and their very strong telepathic hallucinations. Spock is then exonerated, Pike is returned and everything works out in the end. (Oops! Sorry to give it away!) “The Menagerie” was the 16th episode of Star Trek produced, and the 11th one to air.

I’m delighted that one of the 300 theaters showing “The Menagerie” is right down the road from me, in Simi Valley; another, in Camarillo, is actually closer in mile count, but I know Simi better than I know Camarillo so I’ll probably go over there.

Sci Fi Wire reports that Christian Bale and Brandon Routh, who played Batman and Superman (respectively) in Batman Begins and Superman Returns, and who are on deck to reprise those roles in The Dark Knight and The Man of Steel, will not play Batman and Superman in Warner Brothers’ planned Justice League live-action film, which the studio would like to release in 2009.

The Middle-Earth blog reports a rumor from the MTV Movie Blog that Cate Blanchett—who appeared as Galadriel in New Line Cinema’s three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy—has expressed an interest in appearing in the studios planned feature film adaptation of The Hobbit. Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson have also expressed similar interests.

Personally, I think it would be terribly distracting to see familiar faces in new roles. Galadriel, Legolas, and Aragorn don’t appear in The Hobbit, and seeing Orlando Bloom as the Elf-king or Viggo Mortenson as Bard would just feel really strange to me. Of course, I would love to see Ian McKellen as Gandalf and Hugo Weaving as Elrond again, and it wouldn’t be unthinkable for John Rhys-Davies to play Gimli’s father, Gloin. The rest of the bunch need to move on and get new gigs.

More casting news has emerged recently for J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek film, slated for a Christmas 2008 release. Most recently, Zoe Saldana, who played a minor supporting character in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (among other things), has been cast as Uhura. A few weeks ago, it was also reported that young Russian actor Anton Yelchin has been cast as Pavel Chekov.

The internet has been alive with persistent rumors that the film will focus on the Enterprise crew at Starfleet Academy, but I’m increasingly hoping that these rumors are incorrect. Abrams has been tight-lipped. I feel almost blasphemous saying so, but I don’t think Abrams should feel tightly bound by established Star Trek canon. A “reimagining” in the spirit of Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica would not be bad for the franchise. Thus, I don’t mind if Chekov is part of the crew in a time that corresponds to something before the second season of the original series. Even so, I would not want to see the ages of the characters “leveled out.” Captain Kirk should be ten years or so older than Ensign Chekov later down the line, and I do hope Abrams respects that.

After my previous posting complaining about the end results of a certain DVD on which I appear, I thought maybe I’d call your attention to a featurette that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before. In May 2006, 20th Century Fox released a special edition DVD of Irwin Allen’s production of The Poseidon Adventure, a classic early ’70s disaster movie. I’m in the featurette “The Heroes of the Poseidon,” talking about religious themes in the movie. That project was great fun and I think it came out really well, quite unlike that other experience I recently discussed.

A couple of years ago, I welcomed a camera crew into my office for some interviews about Old Testament stories. The crew went away and I never heard from them again, until I e-mailed the production company last week to find out what ever became of the footage. A representative of that company promptly e-mailed me back and kindly sent out a screener of the DVD that is scheduled to release in October.

I am not happy with the end result.

When I agreed to do the interview, I did not know that the thankfully direct-to-video program would feature “re-enactments” of biblical scenes (and horrible re-enactments at that; only Moses has a proper beard). I did not know that the film would use completely irrelevant footage to distract viewers during longish voiceovers by host Roger Moore (yes, that Roger Moore). And I certainly did not realize that the production would end up trying to promote views that I do not personally endorse. I did suppose that a diversity of opinions might be represented, and represented as such. Silly me.

Here are some of my specific complaints about the program. Yes, I know that you haven’t seen it yet. My hope is that maybe you won’t. But perhaps if I embarrass myself pre-emptively by means of this post, at least my learned colleagues will cut me some slack. Also, as far as I know, I’m not bound by any non-disclosure agreement, so please consider this an “advance review” of the film. (Click on “continue reading” for the whole, long post.)

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Rumor has it that Zachary Quinto, most recently best known as the villain Sylar on NBC’s superhero drama Heroes (quite a good show, by the way), is very close to closing a deal to play Spock in J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek. A few years ago, Quinto played Adam Kaufman in the third season of 24. As Sylar, Quinto has had to portray a range of emotions from rage to fake geniality, and I think his performance on Heroes bodes well for a good portrayal of the stoic Vulcan—plus he gets to be a good guy.

Over the last few years, there have been lots of rumors regarding various attempts to bring the Green Hornet to the silver screen. The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that Seth Rogen is in “final negotiations” to write and star in a Green Hornet movie for Columbia (the American branch of Sony). So far, Rogen is mostly known for comedies, and he’s (currently) too paunchy to play Brit Reid. I’d be most eager to see a good Hornet movie, but not if Columbia turns it into a spoof.

There are still many unanswered questions, of course, including: Will Columbia’s Green Hornet be a period piece (my preference) or a reimagining of the character with a contemporary setting? And which part of his face will he cover?

That’s according to Prince Caspian director Andrew Adamson, as reported by Sci Fi Wire. The full story goes into more detail. Adamson says that he wants “the scale, the movie to bigger than the last film”—referring in particular to the set of Aslan’s How. Okay, I get that, but how about keeping the film close to the storyline of the book?

SCI FI Wire also visited Barrandov studios, where additional sets were built for the film. They included a woodland area called “the dancing lawn,” the royal stables of King Miraz, an underground temple and an enormous outdoor castle, which took up approximately 20,000 square feet of land at the edge of the studio’s property. According to production designer Roger Ford, it took 200 men 15 weeks to build the castle and its full-scale courtyard, which will be the setting for a raid sequence that wasn’t originally in the book.

I’m looking forward to Prince Caspian, but I’m going to be disappointed if it significantly misrepresents the book in favor of “bigness.”