Abrams and Tom Cruise plan to set the newest Mission: Impossible movie all over the world, Abrams revealed while speaking at the Oscar Wilde: Honoring the Irish In Film pre-Academy Awards party in Los Angeles last night.

“We’re working on Mission IV and we have a really cool idea that we’re playing with and I’m looking forward to that coming to pass,” said Abrams, “there’s definitely will be a European presence but there’s a whole crazy story, it’s definitely a jet setting movie.”

The non-Irish Abrams was honored at the party for his contribution to the film industry, receiving an award from Tom Cruise. Trina Y. Vargo, president of the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, explained the reasoning for making Abrams Irish. “Someone once said, ‘there are two groups of people, the Irish, and those who lack imagination,” she said. “So in our book, that makes J.J. Abrams more than Irish. Since J.J. graciously agreed to become an honorary Irishman, he has since visited Ireland with his family and he has optioned the rights to Colum McCann’s book Let the Great World Spin. So we’ve adopted him!”

The Oscars will be awarded Sunday night and although Star Trek XI is not up for best film, Abrams feels that a science fiction film might well walk away with the award. Speaking to the BBC, Abrams said, “I think there’s a real shot. I know everyone’s looking at Avatar, but I was a huge fan of District 9 as well.

“I’m just excited that they’re both up there, nominated for best picture.

“I’m a huge fan of sci-fi and fantasy, horror, so as long as the films keep getting made, whatever awards they win or don’t win is sort of beside the point.”

According to the full list of nominations posted on the SF Site, Star Trek was nominated as Best Science Fiction Film, while both director J.J. Abrams and writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were nominated in their respective categories. The full list of nominations for Trek, as well as the films it will be competing against, can be found below the jump:

Best Science Fiction Film

The Book of Eli
Knowing
Moon
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Best Director

J.J. Abrams (Star Trek)
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Neill Blomkamp (District 9)
James Cameron (Avatar)
Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes)
Zack Snyder (Watchmen)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

Best Writing

Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell (District 9)
James Cameron (Avatar)
Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers (Where the Wild Things Are)
Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci (Star Trek)
Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
Alex Tse, David Hayter (Watchmen)

Best Make-Up

Barney Burman, Minday Hall, Joel Harlow (Star Trek)
Joe Dunckley, Sarah Rubano, Frances Richardson (District 9)
Sarah Monzani (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus)
Gregory Nicotero, Howard Berger (The Book of Eli)
Gregory Nicotero, Howard Berger (Drag Me to Hell)
Mike Smithson, John Rosengrant (Terminator: Salvation)

Best Production Design

Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg (Avatar)
Scott Chambliss (Star Trek)
Stuart Craig (Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince)
Sarah Greenwood (Sherlock Holmes)
Philip Ivey (District 9)
Alex McDowell (Watchmen)

Best Special Effects
Tim Burke, John Richardson, Nicholas Aithadi, Tim Alexander – (Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince)
John DesJardin, Peter G. Travers, Joel Whist, Jessica Norman – (Watchmen)
Volker Engel, Marc Weingert, Mike Vezina – (2012)
Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh, Burt Dalton – (Star Trek)
Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, Matt Aitken – (District 9)
Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, Andrew R. Jones – (Avatar)

For the full list of nominations, head over to the SF Site.

Abrams, who directed Mission: Impossible III, will not be directing Mission: Impossible IV, which is due out Memorial Day weekend 2011, going up against The Hangover 2.

“Tom and J.J. are great talents and we are excited to be working with them to re-launch this legendary franchise,” said Paramount Pictures Chairman and CEO Brad Grey.

The search continues for a director for Mission: Impossible IV.

“We’re going to start probably in April once the writing on Lost is done,” he said. “Trek will come out in 2012 at some point, so we’ve still got a little bit of time, but we’ve been talking about it. We just haven’t been writing.”

No word yet on when production on the sequel would begin.

In other Star Trek XII news, J.J. Abrams couldn’t resist a chance to joke about the subject of the next Star Trek movie while on the National Board of Review. “I have to admit, the [sequel] is really all about the Gorn (Green lizard-like aliens from the original series episode Arena). We just thought it would be fun…to go Gorn.”

“Yes we have some ideas about that,” said Abrams, referring to Star Trek XII. “We’re working on something right now with that and again, you know, it’s early stages.”

Only a few days after TrekToday posted a preview of four new Star Trek XI tie-in novels due out this summer, word has come out that Pocket Books has changed their mind regarding publication of the four tie-in books and has removed them from the Pocket Books 2010 publication schedule.

The reason for the pull back was given in a short statement by Pocket Books. “With last summer’s blockbuster Star Trek movie, J.J. Abrams created a new vibrant, layered version of the Star Trek universe,” said a Pocket Book spokesperson. “After careful consideration, we decided to hold off on telling new stories while J.J. and his team continue to develop his vision.”

It is not known at the present time if the books will be released at a future date or if they have been permanently shelved. Also unknown is how this will affect the publication schedule for the rest of 2010.

Abrams was asked if he was closer to making a decision about directing Star Trek XII. “No,” he said. “We don’t have a script yet or anything, but we have a release date (June 29, 2012). There’s a release date, but we’re still working on the script. The idea is that they have faith in this team.”

Abrams has no target date yet for delivering a script for the sequel. “I’m sure there is one, but I haven’t figured out what it is,” he said. “You can work backwards and figure out that you probably would need something, shit, now!”

Asked what he thought about Star Trek XI going up against Spider-Man in the summer of 2012, Abrams said, “I’d be psyched to see what that is. I know they’re talking about a reboot of Spider-Man, so that will be interesting. I would think that there’s room for all of us.”

Many fans were hoping for a 2011 release for Star Trek XII, but they will have to wait until June of 2012 for their next chance to see Star Trek on the big screen.

At this time, Star Trek XII is the only movie scheduled for the pre-4th of July weekend of June 29, 2012.

The novels are: Refugees, by Alan Dean Foster; Seek a Newer World, by Christopher L. Bennett; More Beautiful Than Death, by David Mack; and The Hazard of Concealing, by Greg Cox.

In Refugees, “Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise must decide if a group of refugees are actually a menace, or just misunderstood.” Refugees is due out in late May.

Due out in late June, Seek a Newer World features a Klingon attack on the Enterprise. “When the Enterprise is outnumbered and under attack, the crew manages to escape and discovers an entire hidden civilization in this exciting new original Star Trek novel.”

More Beautiful Than Death, due out in late July, is “an all-new adventure featuring the new Enterprise crew on a mission to broker a Federation trade agreement.” On board the Enterprise is someone familiar to Trek fans, Spock’s father Sarek.

In The Hazard of Concealing, the elder Spock’s “knowledge of both technology and future events makes him one of the most important strategic assets in the galaxy. Starfleet Command wants Ambassador Spock to rejoin Starfleet and share that information with them, but Spock is reluctant to interfere with the unfolding of the new timeline.”

The official Twitter of Undercovers posted a tweet yesterday regarding the Undercovers pilot. “Going to Comic-Con next July? If so, I can almost guarantee that Undercovers will be there with their pilot!”

Information on Undercovers has been kept under wraps, but Gerald McRaney (Jericho, Deadwood, Major Dad) and Boris Kodjoe (Second Time Around, Soul Food) have been confirmed for the spy drama.

Undercovers is about a husband and wife spy team, Samantha and Steve, who are called out of retirement from the profession and back into service. They are a happy, loving couple, who would “never even think about killing one another,” according to Abrams. The couple has also agreed to never bring up each other’s pasts.

The pilot episode will open with the pair hunting down a former love of Samantha’s.

If a deal is worked out, McCann will adapt the screenplay of his National Book Award-winning fifth novel, which would be produced by Abrams at Paramount.

Let the Great World Spin is an allegory of 9/11 and its aftermath. The story is built around a real-life “artistic crime of the century”. In 1974, Frenchman Philippe Petit walked across a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center Towers, an illegal act.

Characters in the story include: a young Irish monk living among prostitutes in the Bronx, a group of Park Avenue mothers mourning their sons who were killed in Vietnam, and a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother walking the streets with her teenage daughter.