According to the producer, Thompson’s looks helped land the role. “You have an alien look to you,” he told her, which made her perfect to portray a Romulan.

Thompson was glad to appear in Star Trek XI, as she had been referring to Star Trek for years in answering people who got her name wrong. “I just want to thank you,” she told the producer who hired her, “because I’ve gone through my whole life identifying myself over the phone for restaurant reservations, saying ‘Scottie Thompson.’ And they’d say, ‘Dottie?’ And I’d say, ‘Scotty; like beam me up.’ So when I found out they were doing Star Trek I was like, ‘I have to be in this movie. I don’t care what my role is.’”

J.J. Abrams was encouraging to the actress, complimenting her work. “Working with J.J. Abrams, he’s amazing,” said Thompson. “He’s just so positive and has so much energy. The scene I did was more like a photo shoot in that I was just kind of floating about in this almond grove. I remember him saying, ‘Oh, you’re really good.’ He’d give me these little stories and I’d just go into my head. He said, ‘Have you done this before?’ because it was like modeling, the way I was dealing with the camera. I said, ‘No. I guess I’m really good at my little world that I like to float around in.’”

Glad that her scenes were not cut, Thompson is happy to now be part of the Star Trek world. “Up until the last minute I was checking on IMDB to see if it’d end up being (‘Scenes Deleted’). I remember somebody sending me a Facebook message and saying, ‘Hey, I just saw you in the movie,’ because they saw it before I did. I was like, ‘Yeah!’ That’s a whole awesome world, the Star Trek world, and it’s exciting to be a part of that.”

As reported by TrekMovie.com, the Nero comics were meant to fill in the missing twenty-five years between Spock and Nero’s first encounter, and after they went back in time and met again. “…there is a huge story sitting right there in the middle of the movie that, obviously, they didn’t have a lot of time to go into on-screen with everything else going on,” explained Jones. “So we get to fill in a little bit of that in graphic form.” “And it isn’t just the Shawshank Redemption, or ‘Neroshank Redemption,” added Johnson. “He is in prison for part of the series, but how did he know where to be to meet Spock? A big part of the mini-series is about how he learns that.”

In addition to filling in that missing time, there are things included that fans will enjoy. “We have a sort of famous Klingon,” said Johnson. There are characters, things, entities from the Star Trek universe that are in the comic that were not seen in the movie, that actually tie into the story.”

Jones and Johnson then spoke about the Star Trek XI adaptation comic. “It is not going to be an exact duplication of the movie,” said Jones. “We will be able to hear some inner dialog from our characters, which you don’t get on screen.”

“We don’t want to just tell the scenes verbatim, because you can just watch them in the movie,” said Johnson. “So we would rather just use the comic form and take advantage of it. So show scenes that you know, but show them from a different perspective.”

As for future plans, “There has been discussion about doing a Countdown-ish project before a second movie,” said Johnson. He also revealed that the pair would like to do a Next Generation story. “We have had conversations with IDW, but to jump back and tell a story between Nemesis and Countdown, to show how Data came back and became captain of the Enterprise, and what happened to Picard and their relationship and other members of the crew,” he said. “We are huge Next Gen fans, so yeah there is another story to be told where Countdown left off.”

To read more, head to the article located here.

As reported by Inside Film, some years are lean for an actor, but 2009 has proven to be a very busy one for Eric Bana, with five films out this year, including: Star Trek XI, Mary and Max, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Funny People and his own Love the Beast. Bana explained why he accepted the Star Trek XI role. “I’m a big fan of J.J. [Abrams] and I always wanted a chance to work with him,” said Bana. “I just think he’s got incredible taste and amazing skill and eye as a director. My agent told me about [Star Trek XI] and I was like ‘Mate, I really don’t think that’s going to be for me,’ and he said, ‘Trust me. Just read it.” And I read it and immediately fell in love with it. Thirty pages in I knew I was going to see the film regardless. I knew that whoever would play Kirk and Spock would have two of the greatest introductory roles of all time, and then Nero appeared and I saw that it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun.”

It was not the thought of playing a villain that attracted Bana to the role of Nero though. “I just thought it was a great supporting character in a great film and had that sense of fun on the page that was there when I saw the film for the first time.”

Another benefit was that Nero was new and unknown. “It was a rare case of playing a character where you really have to invent most of it,” said Bana. “We haven’t seen him before. Its not like you’re playing an historical figure. There’s a freedom which comes with that which I love.”

To read more, head to the article located here.

As seen at YouTube, “This is not your father’s Star Trek,” claims the new thirty-second ad for Star Trek XI. Much of the ad contains scenes shown previously, with new footage augmenting some of those scenes.The fight on the Romulan drilling platform is seen in more detail,including a parachute-less Sulu’s tumble off of the platform with Kirkjumping off to try to rescue him.

As reported by the Coventry Telegraph, the film adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife was delayed because the crew had to wait for Eric Bana‘s hair to grow back after the actor had his head shaved for his role of Nero in Star Trek XI.
Most of the filming for The Time Traveler’s Wife had wrapped in 2007, but there was one more scene to shoot and Bana’s shaved head did not match his look in other scenes. “Eric was the hold-up,” explained co-star Rachel McAdams, who played love interest Clare Abshire. “He had to shave his head for a different role, for Star Trek. So we were waiting on Eric’s hair.”

Bana’s hair wasn’t the only thing holding up the movie though. An additional scene needed to be filmed in a meadow, which did not look the same as it had the first time a scene had been filmed there.

“Basically, we were waiting on nature and Eric’s hair,” said McAdams.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of librarian Henry DeTamble, who has a genetic disorder that causes uncontrolled time-travel. The Time Traveler’s Wife will release on August 14.

To read more, head to the article located here.

As reported by MTV Movies Blog, nine images of Star Trek XI cards were posted, which include character, ship and location scenes, including some shots not seen before. The card pictured here shows Starfleet Academy in San Francisco with futuristic buildings in the background and various personnel going about their business.

Another card shows Zachary Quinto as Spock facing Leonard Nimoy as older Spock. In this scene set in a hangar, young Spock is either greeting or sending off older Spock with the split-fingered Vulcan “Live long and prosper” greeting. Quinto is on another card as Spock.

Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy is shown in what appears to be a scene on the Bridge.

Star Trek aliens appear, including a sultry Orion female lounging on a bed in lingerie, Nero, and an unidentified alien. Nero’s oddly-shaped Romulan ship, traveling through a blue sky, is seen on a card.

Nero’s ship isn’t the only ship seen. One card pictures the USS Enterprise set against the black void of space either attacking something or under attack itself .

To see the cards, head to the link located here.

As reported by TrekMovie.com, the thirty-second commercial is comprised mostly of scenes seen before in previous trailers and commercials, but a discerning eye can pick out a few new bits.
One scene shows Kirk in an icy cave on Delta Velga. A rather blurry older Spock (Leonard Nimoy) can be seen in the background. Other scenes include Narada’s drilling rig and the destruction of another planet.

To see the video and screencaps, head to the link located here.

As reported by NineMSN, J.J. Abrams was surprised at how Bana was transformed after a few cosmetic changes. “He had to shave his head, put on face tattoos, crazy ears and a huge wart,” said Abrams. “He just transformed. He did all these great things. To me, he became this character.”Others didn’t recognize Bana after the transformation. “Eric came up with this great voice and did all these things to a degree that there were a couple of people, directors, who saw the movie and afterward said ‘Who was that bad guy,’” explained Abrams. “When I told them it was Eric Bana, they were like ‘What?’. It was so funny seeing people who would know him not recognize him.”

To read the article, head here.