Over in Los Angeles, the 2009 Screenwriting Expo has been taking place, which has been attended by Star Trek scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The pair, who also penned last summer's Transformers sequel with Ehren Krueger (although it's just Krueger working on the script of Transformers 3), are in the planning stages for the Star Trek sequel, and were tracked down by ComingSoon, who fired some questions at them.

It was Orci, however, who dropped in, "We're rereading some of our favorite 'Star Trek' novels now and watching the original series again. The honest answer is we don't know yet. We think it's going to be a 2012 release, but I'm not sure."

Keen though we are to see the next big screen Star Trek adventure sooner rather than later, this isn't particularly surprising news. JJ Abrams' own schedule looks quite tight given his work on Mission: Impossible IV right now, a film that he may yet choose to direct (and there's Fringe in the mix too, although we wouldn't put hard cash on that getting a third season). If he does helm MI4, that means there's simply no chance of Star Trek in 2011 anyway. All the pointers are looking, it seems, at a three-year gap between the films.

As Alex Kurtzman said, "Originally we thought we were going to have to have the script in by Christmas, but the release changed so certainly within the next eight months I'd say."

You can find our round-up of Star Trek sequel news here.

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