Out on the rounds for Kill Me Three Times, Simon Pegg is, naturally enough, fielding a lot of questions about Star Trek 3. As revealed back in January, he's not only returning to the Enterprise as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, but has also stepped up to the plate to co-write the next instalment with Doug Jung. "It's terrifying!" he laughs.
"It was a difficult decision," Pegg told Collider. "I hemmed and hawed about it, a little bit, because it felt like a big responsibility. I owe J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burke an awful amount. I love those guys. I want to do right by them, so I felt like I should man up and do it. It’s weird to walk into something and take ownership of it, in a way. Everything else that I’ve written has been mine, from the very germ of the first idea, or shared with Edgar (Wright) or Nick (Frost).
"But with this, I’m walking into a realm that doesn’t belong to me, and I have to treat it with a degree of respect. Obviously, I always treat things with respect, but I have to abide by certain rules and do right by the original series, and not be too postmodern with it and not be too aware of itself. I have to try to take on the spirit of the show, rather than fill it with stuff that people will just go, 'Oh, yeah, that’s from episode something or other.' It’s more than that."
Speaking to Den Of Geek, meanwhile, Pegg revealed that his draft has been entirely started from scratch: he hasn't read the previous iteration of the screenplay by Roberto Orci, and nor did the studio want him to.
"We went back to the drawing board", he says. "We had creative meetings with [director] Justin Lin, and there were things he wanted in there. I haven't written like this before... You're given a bunch of stuff... so Doug and I go, 'Okay, right, let's try and get that into it'. So it's an interesting process".
"I had certain issues with Into Darkness," he continues, candidly. "I really, really am very proud of Into Darkness, but I feel like it kind of wanted to embrace itself a little too much, rather than take off and do what Star Trek did, which is to go off into the depths of the galaxy. It was about referencing not only a previous film but also kind of hanging onto the coast of Earth a little bit. So for me it's now about the spirit of adventure and exploration and also, in modern terms, just how would that be for people, to be away for that amount of time and that kind of stuff. We're trying to evolve the story at the same time as not letting it go."
Shooting on Star Trek 3, "come hell or high water" (not the subtitle), gets underway in the summer for a release on July 8 next year. Kill Me Three Times is out in the States on April 10.