Star Trek XI‘s Anton Yelchin is in final negotiations for a role in Naomi Foner‘s Very Good Girls.

Actresses Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen are also in negotiation for starring roles in Very Good Girls, which is due to begin filming this June.

In Very Good Girls, two lifelong best friends (to be played by Fanning and Olsen if they sign) have just graduated high school and both are trying to lose their virginity as a “rite of passage into the adult world.”

But both friends fall in love with the same man (Yelchin) and their goal of losing their virginity “becomes more complicated and emotionally dangerous than they had ever imagined.”

“The film deals with female sexuality and friendship in a way we haven’t seen before,” said Foner. “These girls will be stunning young women in a couple of years, but they’ve struggled through high school with only each other. Most of us have been there. This is the summer where they finally get to touch real life.”

The actor also spoke about his Russian accent, explaining that even though he was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, his natural accent is long-gone. “I lost my accent years ago,” he said. “My accent is just for the movies. Walter Koenig‘s accent was so fun and wonderful to fool around with. It’s like the original series itself. It’s got this great camp quality to it. I embrace that.”

Yelchin didn’t know much about the original series but became a fan once he started watching it. “I love the original series,” he said. “I didn’t know much about it until we did the first film, and I did so much research on it that I get excited by the idea of going back into all of that, looking at my notes on how to play Chekov, watching his scenes again in the movies and the series.”

Now Yelchin is ready to reprise his role of Chekov in Star Trek 2. “I’m stoked,” he said. “They always keep us in the dark, sorta till the last minute. What’s happening, who’ll be in it and what the film will be like. It’s good to know that we’re making it and that J.J.’s directing it, is all I can say.

“I have no idea what Benicio del Toro is playing. I read online, like everybody else, that he’s been having conversations with J.J. No idea what level that’s at. J.J. won’t even tell him what role it would be. That’s J.J.!

“I would be honored to be on the same set with Benicio del Toro in ANY role. If that works out, it’ll be great.”

“It’ll be a lot of fun,” he said. “The thing about that movie is that the people are so great that are involved.”

Yelchin went on to praise J.J. Abrams. “I think J.J. is brilliant,” he said. “I’m proud of this film and I’m equally proud of Star Trek. They’re completely different universes, no pun intended. But they’re both, for what they are, really good films. So I’m excited to go back because those guys want to make another really good film. I don’t know anything about what they’re doing and they keep you in the dark until the last minute, but I do know that they want to make something really good, which is exciting. And it’ll be fun to fly around in a spaceship again at Paramount, and to be with those guys again.’

Meanwhile, working on Like Crazy made Yelchin appreciate the world of small films. “…there’s technology and means available to edit something at home and to shoot it on a consumer-level camera for no money with ten people on the crew, a small group of really dedicated people, I can’t say that enough, how fundamental it is to the evolution of the industry and the development of filmmaking outside of spectacle filmmaking, “he said. “I’m a huge supporter of it. I was talking with a buddy of mine about pitching in and making small movies for like five grand, ten grand.

“I’d love to direct and write, and of course keep acting. But if someone needed a couple grand to make a small movie, I’m all for it. I’m just a huge supporter of this universe of filmmaking. It’s just fundamental.”

“I would have never imagined that he wouldn’t come back or that…a lot of the key players wouldn’t have returned for the second one,” said Quinto. “But I guess it was a possibility, so that I’m glad there’s not doubt about that [ the Abrams return]. It’s really starting to ramp up in a big way…”

“I think it would be unimaginable to make that film without J.J.,” said Yelchin, “so to know that he’s going to be at the helm again and sort of manning the ship so to speak is pretty amazing,. We all have such tremendous respect for him and he’s such a brilliant human being that it gives you great confidence in going in to make this again…”

Both actors are preparing to reprise their roles as Spock and Chekov. “I think figuring out the point at which we reenter the story will be informative and define a lot about how I prepare for it,” said Quinto. “There’s a transformation that takes place as we get ready to start. And actually the physical part of it is pretty significant.”

“It’s going to be a lot of stuff,” said Yelchin, of his preparations to play Chekov. “It’s going to be going back and rewatching the shows and going back and looking at my notes on the original because I think there were insights that I wrote down and things that I studied and going back and rewatching the movies and…going back and watching the first movie that we made and studying what I did there to try and capture that and see…how I can combine the two.”

In Like Crazy, British student Anna (Felicity Jones), meets and falls in love with Jacob (Yelchin) while attending college in California. She overstays her visa to be with Jacob for a while longer but long-term this has the effect of getting her banned from the U.S. and the pair must then struggle with maintaining a long-distance relationship and fighting the legal battles Anna must endure while trying to return to the U.S.

Unlike most movies, the dialogue in Like Crazy was not set in stone, but was mostly in an outline format. The actors had to improvise when it came to their characters.

Like Crazy took the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has received rave reviews.

Like Crazy will be released on October 28 in Los Angeles and New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ZV-bwZmBw

An interview with Yelchin about Like Crazy can be seen here.

Zoë Saldana (Uhura) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) will be appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight. They will be promoting their latest movies; Colombiana for Saldana and Fright Night for Yelchin.

Jimmy Kimmel Live airs on ABC at midnight.

Thanks to Cappy for the tip!

Yelchin’s latest film is a remake of Fright Night, due out this Friday. In Fright Night, Yelchin portrays Charley Brewster, a young man who suspects his new neighbor of being a vampire.

Like with Star Trek XI, Yelchin did prep work for the Fright Night remake. “If there’s something else that’s out there that’s info about the movie or that contributes to the context of what we’re doing, I look into it,” he said.

Now Yelchin is working on Odd Thomas, due out next year, an adaptation of Dean Koontz‘ s novel of the same name. In Odd Thomas, short-order cook Thomas (Yelchin) can see and speak to the dead, but they can’t speak to him. Thomas must somehow use his ability to communicate with the dead to prevent a mass catastrophe from happening.

“[Odd Thomas] is going well,” said Yelchin. “It’s a great group of people, a great cast and crew. For me, it’s a very good story. Ultimately, it’s a beautiful romance, a tragic romance, which is something people are always drawn to. For me, it’s a pulp novel. It’s like Raymond Chandler, but with supernatural shit thrown in. It definitely has that quality, and I like that. That excites me.”

After that, Star Trek 2 should be next. In Star Trek 2, Yelchin is looking forward to reprising the role of Chekov, but has no specific wishes on what Chekov should be or do in the next film. “I trust the people that are writing it,” he said. “They wrote a good film and a good character the first time around, and I enjoyed doing that. So I trust that they’ll find some mission for me to do in the next one.”

Yelchin has tried to model his Chekov after Walter Koenig‘s version of the character and hopes that fans will be able to see that his Chekov leads to the original series older version. “I don’t know if [my performance] builds to Walter’s Chekov, that if we make more films then suddenly it’ll totally become that guy,” he said. “I just think that I tried to capture as close as possible all of the great qualities that Walter brought to his Chekov. So I hope there’s a continuity. I don’t know if it’s necessarily an evolution, but I hope there’s a continuity where you can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I buy that person being that age.’”

Yelchin voiced the character of Smurf Clumsy, an unlucky Smurf. Where Clumsy goes, bad luck is sure to follow.

“Clumsy is the heart and soul of the movie,” said Director Raja Gosnell. “His journey is the most emotional. He’s kind of the put-upon younger brother – in a way, the cause of all their problems – trying to find his place in the big Smurf family. Anton has an incredibly youthful, soulful voice, perfect for our little Clumsy.”

Yelchin’s interpretation of Clumsy was a little different than the TV version of the blue character. “I was familiar with Clumsy from the TV series, where he had that Southern twang,” said Yelchin. “I went back and watched that, and then director Raja Gosnell and I talked about it. We decided to make Clumsy a little simpler, a little sweeter. His voice is pitched higher than my normal speaking voice – it’s full of joy, optimism, and enthusiasm for life. Clumsy isn’t trying to mess anything up for anybody – he’s just clumsy, and actually, he’s tired of being clumsy.”

The Smurfs released in the US last week.

Yelchin, like the other Star Trek 2 actors, has no idea when actual filming begins. “It should be at some point,” he said. “At some point, we will make it.”

But Yelchin is ready to go when the call comes. “I haven’t read the script,” he said, “but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what it is. It will be a lot of fun to play the character again, do all the research again and do all the homework. Also, it’s a great group of people. It’s one thing when you’re going back to a movie and you’re like, ‘Oh, God, I’ve got to work with these people again.’ But, it’s such a great group. I enjoyed working with them all so much that I look forward to seeing them all again and working with them.”

Slipping back into the character of Chekov after several years isn’t as easy as one might think; given the familiarity Yelchin has with the character after playing him in Star Trek XI. “In a way, it will be difficult…to make sure it’s the same person. That was almost four years ago, so it will definitely be challenging to try to capture the same thing.”

In Yelchin’s most recent film, The Beaver, which opens tomorrow, Yelchin plays Porter Black, the oldest son of a depressed man, Walter Black (Mel Gibson), who adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communicating.

Yelchin is the first to sign up for Odd Thomas, which is the “story of an ordinary man (Thomas) with an extraordinary gift,” the ability to communicate with the dead. He must use this gift to prevent a mass catastrophe from occurring.

Koontz’s Odd Thomas is the first of four novels in a series, and if the adaptation of the first story is a success, more films based on the other books could follow.

Odd Thomas is now in pre-production, with a budget of approximately forty-seven million dollars.

Yelchin will be seen later this year in a remake of Fright Night, where he will play Charley Brewster, a teenager and horror film fan who is convinced that his neighbor is a vampire.