By GustavoLeao / 13:42, 8 January 2012 / Star Trek: Nemesis

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Collider posted an extensive interview with Star Trek XII director J.J. Abrams and here are few excerpts

With Star Trek 2 starting up, how will you balance that with Alcatraz?

ABRAMS: We start shooting Star Trek on Thursday, so I’ve gotta go! The truth is that this show, I didn’t create, I’m a producer on it. Luckily, with the people with whom I work, what I’ve been trying to do is help, whether it’s reading the scripts, giving notes, giving suggestions on cuts, doing the theme music, and playing with the show and getting it up and running. But, the truth is that, whether I was doing Star Trek or not, this is a show that was always going to be run by Jennifer [Johnson] and Dan [Pyne]. This is not something that I am suddenly stepping away from and not running. They’ve been carrying the ball, not me.

Are you shooting Star Trek 2 in 3D, or will you be converting it later?

ABRAMS: We’re shooting on film, and the reason for that is I wanted to shoot with anamorphic, and you can’t shoot 3D in anamorphic.

Do you plan on using lens flares again, and have you thought about how the 3D will affect that, in converting it later?

ABRAMS: I’ve had some people make fun of me about that. Yeah, we’ve done some tests. Not only lens flare tests, but we’ve done 3D tests. We actually converted a bunch of the original movie, which looked really good. That was the thing that made me feel like, maybe that would be okay. But, I didn’t want to shoot the movie digitally.

But, it will be in 3D?

ABRAMS: It will be converted, for those who want to see it in 3D. But, I wanted to match the look of the first one and shoot it anamorphically.

Because the popularity of 3D has died down some, are you worried about the commercial viability of 3D?

ABRAMS: I did not fight for the 3D. It was something that the studio wanted to do, and I didn’t want to do it. And then, when I saw the first movie converted in sections, I thought that it actually looked really cool. So, I was okay with their doing it, as long as I could shoot the movie the way I wanted to, in anamorphic film, and then let them convert it. So, those who want to see it in 3D, which looked pretty cool, can do it, and those that want to see it in 2D can do that too.

What made you want to cast him [Benedict Cumberbatch] ?

ABRAMS: He’s a genius. Honestly, he’s just an incredible actor. If you’ve seen his work in Sherlock, he’s just got incredible skills. He’s an amazing stage actor. He did amazing work (on stage) in Frankenstein. He’s brilliant. You try to cast people who are great. We got lucky.

Did you look at a lot of people for that role?

ABRAMS: Sure.

Was he an immediate choice?

ABRAMS: I just loved his work and thought that he was perfect for what we needed. We were just very lucky.

Was the decision to not use anybody from the original cast this time an easy or difficult decision to make?

ABRAMS: It was just what the story of the movie required. With everything, you respond to what you’re trying to do and what story you’re trying to tell.

How long will the shoot last?

ABRAMS: Four months. Just about as long as the first one. Maybe a little less.

Is it safe to say that this Star Trek movie is totally in its own universe, moving forward without any changes in the timeline?

ABRAMS: Yeah. I think the job of the first movie was just to establish it. I don’t want to give anything away, but I would say that the burden we had in the first movie was just existing at all. With this movie, instead of having to stand on the shoulders of the original series, we built a little bit of a platform for us, with the last movie, to tell this story.

The full interview is here.