I read a lot of other movie blogs, a…lot. Most of the time you’ll see the same pieces of news dotted around, new trailers.. ‘exclusives’ all that stuff, but occasionally you get a story that you can tell has got people excited because EVERYONE is talking about it.

So the Hot Topic this morning is that Variety are reporting that Simon Pegg has been cast in J.J Abrams Star Trek, specifically in the role of ‘Scotty’. This is fucking fantastic news. I’m not a massive Star Trek fan (I don’t hate it… I just never got into it) but casting decisions like this bring me on board, get me all excited and make me do the weird moving my feet dance that makes it look like I need to pee. Pegg is a brilliant comic actor but can do serious too as he showed with his little role in ‘Mission Impossible 3′ (a J.J Abrams film no less), and a blink-and-you-miss-it role in ‘Band of Brothers’.

Regardless of your or my opinion of Abrams or Star Trek one thing can’t be denied; they’re making some stellar (nice pun.. blam!) casting decisions. Eric Bana will play a villain called ‘Nero’, Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) will play Spock and the Hollywood Reporter also announced today that John Cho will play Sulu.

Hollywood casting directors should really sit up and take some fucking notes (you know who you are) because Alyssa Weisberg and April Webster have got it nailed. Step 1) find awesome actor. Step 2) cast said actor in good role. It’s doesn’t seem like rocket science to me, yet somehow Nicolas Cage is still working….

‘Star Trek’ is still in early pre-production but will supposedly be released some time in 2008

via Hollywood Reporter