One of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood was finally confirmed yesterday at the San Diego Comic-Con: Zachary Quinto, last seen fiddling around with heroic brains as the bad guy Sylar in Heroes, has been cast as the new Spock in JJ Abrams' reboot of Star Trek.
However, Abrams did have one genuine surprise up his sleeve: instead of unveiling the rest of the Trek cast, notably the actor who will play the young Captain James T. Kirk in his companion piece-cum-prequel to the original TV show, Abrams announced that Quinto would not be the only actor to play Spock in the new movie. And with that, Leonard Nimoy - the original Spock, and the man who made pointy ears and a v-shaped hand salute cool - walked onto the stage at Hall H, driving 6,500 Con attendees wild.
Nimoy's appearance in the movie - "It was logical," he quipped when asked why he was doing it - had been semi-revealed by former co-star William Shatner (who, Abrams added, may still have a small part in the new movie), but the confirmation still came as a surprise, and further hints that the new Trek may be told largely in flashback, with the aged Spock (he's the longest-living and oldest member of the original crew of the Starship Enterprise, thanks to his Vulcan blood) possibly used as a framing device.
Abrams, who had earlier appeared for just over a minute to talk about his new monster movie, Cloverfield/1.18.08/Whatever the hell it’s called, said very little about the new Trek movie, but he did praise the script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, saying it was so good that he would have been jealous of anyone else who got to direct it.
As for Quinto, he took the new adulation in his stride and said very little about his casting as the world’s favourite Vulcan. But he’s a good actor, as Heroes has showed, and damn, he looks the part and then some. If the rest of the casting is as on the money as this – and Abrams and fellow producer Damon Lindelof dropped enough hints to suggest that they’re not too far away from announcing who will play Kirk, Scotty, Chekhov, Sulu, Uhura and the rest.