J.J. Abrams Sets Record Straight About William Shatner
October 15th, 2008
Movie and television director J.J. Abrams has addressed a war of words with William Shatner over the casting of the upcoming ‘Star Trek’ film.
Abrams, who’s helming the new movie, said in a recent interview that he attempted to include Shatner’s character, Captain James T. Kirk, in the movie and “actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right.”
Shatner then responded in a light-hearted video posted on YouTube explaining how to bring Captain Kirk back to life and saying, “nobody ever offered me a part in your movie.”
In a chat with MTV News, the ‘Cloverfield’ director discussed the ongoing exchange saying, “I think what happened was, I said we made many efforts or something to get him in the movie. I think he or his people interpreted that as we reached out and tried to get him in. I meant internally. I didn’t wanna present him with something we didn’t believe in. So we were trying to make this thing work, and it didn’t happen.
He added, “I didn’t [personally] write anything [for Shatner]. Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci], who wrote a spectacular script for us, we all wanted to make it work. The scene they wrote, which was good, it honestly felt like ‘contrivance to insert William Shatner into our movie.’ It just felt very much like what it was.”
