For fans of Star Trek, it’s a good news/bad news kind of day as it’s being reported that actor Peter Weller has joined the cast of J.J. Abrams’s upcoming sequel to his Star Trek reboot, but also that Benicio Del Toro has passed on the role of the villain.
Weller is well-known for having played Officer Murphy in the Robocop series and is no stranger to Star Trek, having appeared in a pair of episodes of Enterprise. The role he is to play in the new film is, of course, unknown at this point in time since Abrams just loves his secrets, so we probably won’t know for some time.
The even bigger news is that Del Toro, who recently went into talks to play the film’s villain, has passed on the role because of monetary issues. There’s been recent talk from Latino Review that Del Toro was going to be playing the infamous Khan Noonian Singh (originally played by the late Ricardo Montalban), but Abrams himself denied this by saying that it was “not true.”
Now we are also hearing word from Vulture that a highly-placed source is confirming the villain to be Khan. While it hasn’t been officially confirmed, producer Damon Lindelof did leave a cryptic tweet on his account simply saying “VULTUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE!!!!!” Could this be a tease/confirmation that they’re right or is he simply getting into the spirit of the rumor?
Personally, I think that if someone was going to play Khan, Del Toro was a perfect choice, so perfect that it would even appear to favor the argument that Khan is indeed the next villain, but we’ll just have to wait for confirmation to be sure.
Who do you think would make a good Star Trek villain? If Khan is the villain, who would you like to see play him now that Del Toro has passed? Let us know in the comments.
(Sources: First Showing, Comic Book Movie)
