After months of speculation, it’s finally been confirmed the role Bendedict Cumberbatch will play in the upcoming Star Trek sequel.
If you don’t want to know, stop reading this story now. And you may just want to turn off your computer and avoid the Internet for the next year and a half as well….
TrekMovie has confirmed that Cumberbatch is stepping into the shoes of Ricardo Montalban and will play Khan Noonian Singh in the next installment.
TrekMovie reports that this installment won’t follow the same storyline as “Space Seed,” the original Trek episode that introduced Khan to the Trek universe. It’s also being reported that the creative team behind the new film have had Khan in mind as an adversary since the last movie was in production. Reports indicate that a scene showing Khan’s sleeper ship, the Botany Bay, was planned for a post-credits tease but then dropped.
Here’s a report from TrekMovie with more details:
While big news, this is actually not a huge surprise. Trek‘s new filmmakers have often cited the Christopher Nolan’s Batman series as their model, with the second film The Dark Knight successfully brining back the Joker and Khan is the closest to Trek gets to Batman’s Joker. And again the team kind of already let the cat out of the bag on this one when they recorded the DVD commentary back in 2009 and said they had considered a post-credits sceene showing the Botany Bay, Khan’s sleeper ship. Then of course there is Abrams widely reported casting process which began with Benecio del Toro and went through a number other prominent Latino (like Montalban) actors before he ended up picking Cumberbatch, after what has been said to be a very powerful audition.
No word yet on if director J.J. Abrams will try to recreate the iconic scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan featured below.
So, what do you think about this news? Good or bad?
Ehhhh…I’m on the fence. I don’t like it when they rehash the same stories as before, especially in reboots. But at the same time a newer take could be cool.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes will make a convincing Khan – perhaps not as striking as Montalban but convincing.
For crying out loud! Can’t Hollywood come up with anything new? Montalban’s Khan was one of those iconic characters that should not be tampered with.
I would agree with Michael, but whatever Eric Bana was supposed to be playing in the first movie was a giant mess, so maybe they should go with someone that has been established in the Trek universe… not sure it should be Khan, though… but I do think Cumberbatch will be great… they should have had him in a slightly different role then Khan… and if they don’t do the Kirk Khan yell it would be a disappointment…
I suppose Cumberbatch could pass for Indian with some make-up but I’m reminded of Bob Balaban playing Dr. Chandra in the movie 2010. There’s plenty of good Indian actors. Still I mainly hope the plot doesn’t suck as much as the first rebooted Trek movie, they got so much of the other stuff right, the plot was just a shame.
I managed not to read anything in this article by doing one thing:
Taking off my glasses and leaving them off until I got down here to the Comments.
I know it’s a fools attempt, and so I just expect that sometime between now and when the first trailers come out, I’ll find out who BC is going to play.
Whoever he plays, it’s going to be fun.
And in the meanwhile, Sherlock Season 2 should be showing up on PBS soon. Just in time for me to stop weeping over losing “Eureka”.
(Damned “Ghost Hunters” and other “reality” b.s. programming SyFyillus Channel. And if you cancel “Warehouse”, I will straight-up quit you.)
Hmmm, I assumed from the article that Cumberbatch would be playing Khan. If that isn’t the role, then I suppose he could portray Khan’s #1 advisor & henchman Joaquin. The original episode of Space Seed, the film Wrath of Khan & the series of Greg Cox novels giving the full history of Khan Noonien Singh from birth to death doesn’t forgo the possibility of him being an English/Indian genetic hybrid, so Cumberbatch still could pull it off.
I never got the appeal of Space Seed. Star Trek II was ,of course, awesome but Space Seed was never a favorite.
It can still be good as they avoid a remake.
I seem to recall a few years ago Paramount having a “no new Trek” policy after Nemesis and Enterprise bombed. I hope that when this blows up in their face that they might revisit that thought.
Well, can’t say that I am surprised. That line between reboot and remake is looking blurry now. Now they can skip a step, bring back Khan and maybe Genesis bomb out a replacement Planet Vulcan.
I think that if Khan returns it will not be the latter day Khan of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, but the first encounter that took place in Space Seed 15 years earlier. Plus, now that the timeline has been slightly altered it is likely that the outcome & events in TOS Space Seed will be altered as well in this new film. There shouldn’t be any Genesis Project yet since that technology is still at least 15 years in the future from Space Seed in both realities.