TrekMovie has landed a couple of scoops for J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated sequel to his
Star Trek reboot, which recently wrapped production. First up, the website
has learned that Jason Matthew Smith - who played a security officer nicknamed "Cupcake" in the first movie - will reprise the role in the sequel. "Cupcake" first encountered James Kirk (Chris Pine) in a bar fight near the beginning of the first movie, which is where he received the nickname. He's later seen as a security officer who finds Kirk aboard the USS Enterprise after beaming up on the ship with Scotty. How large his role will be in the sequel is currently unknown (though it's said that he's still assigned to security aboard the Enterprise), and hasn't been officially confirmed by Paramount. Additionally, the character (who's also given the name "Mr. Hendorff") has appeared in IDW's current comic book series, and is an example of how some elements in the comics will hint at what we can expect in the sequel.
In other
Trek news,
TrekMovie spoke with
Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Michael Dorn, who reveals that he almost landed a role in the sequel. Below is the segment from the interview in which he discusses almost being cast in
Trek 2.
Is it true you got a call from the casting people for J.J. Abrams' recent sequel?
Yep. I don’t know what the role was. They called in November or December of last year and said "hey, we would like to know if Michael is interested in playing a part of an officer – a soldier." And we said "yes." Then time went by and we finally talked to them at maybe the end of January or February and they said they had changed their mind and that’s as far as it went?
Do you know why? Was it that they didn’t want to mix the old with the new?
That’s what they said, but who knows really. If you know the business as well as I do, who knows? It could have been the casting people going "hey this would be a good idea and they shot it up the road to JJ and he said ‘no, we aren’t going to do that.’" But I don’t know. It is nothing nefarious. Nothing mean. They changed their mind, so I don’t worry about it.
Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban, Alice Eve and Simon Pegg, the currently untitled
Star Trek sequel is set to hit theaters May 17th, 2013.