Variety reported on Friday that Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro is director J.J. Abrams’ choice for the villain of the much-anticipated Star Trek sequel.
The trade magazine says that Del Toro has met with Abrams about the part, which is currently being kept a secret — perhaps, even to Del Toro. Now, the natural speculation is that the role wouldn’t be kept a secret unless it was someone that fans would identify — with the obvious implication being Khan Noonien Singh, previously portrayed by the late Ricardo Montalban and one of the most recognizable Star Trek foes thanks to 1982′s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the second film in that franchise). If true, this would make good on our two-and-a-half-year-old request to make Khan the villain of the Abrams-helmed sequel. Of course, there’s every chance that Del Toro is being targeted to play someone else from the Star Trek mythos or an entirely new character, so feel free to speculate as wildly as you feel is apt.
Odds are the details of this situation will shake out sooner rather than later — the sequel is expected to start production early next year.
November 7th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
If he is Khan..Im ok with Del Toro Playing him.If not..Im ok with that as well. I love the guys movies. Well.. most of them anyway.
November 7th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
if Khan is in the sequel, I hope he’s not the villain, but an antihero akin to his first appearance and is portrayed as a wildcard against the Enterprise crew and some other antagonist.
November 7th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I hope the film is a success loved Del Toro in Sin City plus I hope that they introduce Section 31 IN THE MOVIE/
November 7th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
If they were going to use Khan, I’d almost think Antonio Banderas was a far better choice…
I think he’s got the intensity to do this.
Del Toro — aside from Sin City, I really don’t know this guy. I wasn’t that crazy about what he did in that film.
Banderas could definitely do an excellent Khan.
November 7th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Considering that this new Trek movie series is a franchise reboot it would make more sense if they threw the Klingons into the mix at this point, so I’m betting that Abrams handed Del Toro a Klingon dictionary at that meeting.
November 7th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Why not Khan AND Klingons? The marketing people would certainly rejoice…
Khan has to be a villain. Why? Because he’s from a race or band of genetic “supermen” who view themselves as humanity’s rightful rulers, and started a war on this basis. In other words, basically super-Nazis. So there’s not much room for rehabilitation there.
The Klingons, on the other hand, have already been substantially reconceived. So maybe the sequel should have Kirk teaming up with Klingons to fight Khan.
Now the absence of Klingon brow-ridges in TOS has been explained by them shooting up with superman DNA. Maybe a stray Klingon ship could accidentally wake Khan and company up from suspended animation while getting their fix. This would explain their presence in human space, and thus Starfleet’s involvement.
November 7th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Wait, why bother remaking “The Wrath of Kahn” which is arguably the best of the original Star Trek films?
How many different aliens and alien species did the original TV show feature? Couldn’t they craft an original idea for the 2nd film of the reboot? What’s the point of redoing, reusing Kahn.
For god sake, GIVE US SOMETHING NEW!!
November 8th, 2011 at 7:54 am
You requested this character be used in the next installment two-and-a-half years ago?? Really??? WOW! That definitely makes you one of the more impressive people on the internet. If you haven’t already reached out to that important ‘first person list’ that we all really care about, you should carve out time today to do so.
(I really hate that ‘I called it’ or ‘I said this in a forum post 4 weeks ago guys!!’ crap. Bite a weenie, we don’t care.)
November 8th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
I hope it isn’t Kahn. Space Seed and STII: TWOK was some some of the best Trek done by the original cast. In see no reason to retread that. It is a big universe (or multiverse)there must be more stories to tell.
November 8th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Richard J. Marcej, I find it extremely amusing that your last sentence is “For god sake, GIVE US SOMETHING NEW!!” when discussing the STAR TREK REMAKE.
November 9th, 2011 at 5:20 am
I can’t believe Newsarama is pushing for unoriginal schlock. The whole point of shaking things up in the first movie was to go in a new direction, tell original stories. I don’t want to see rehashed $#!+ all over again, seriously.
Khan was great. Let’s move on, and whoever wrote that open letter can just wait for Jean Grey to come back the umpteenth time, since apparently rehashing the same story again is their highest aspiration. Ugh.
Okay, I did my due diligence. Michael Doran wrote that open request for a big budget re-run. Mike, please consider not trying to use this forum to encourage creative stagnation for a franchise that, the last time they tried their “Khan” remake, put Nemesis on the big screen and nearly killed Trek.
November 9th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Wrath of Khan has been done! Move along, there is nothing else to see there.
Seriously, there is too much material in the Star Trek universe to choose from. It makes NO SENSE that they would remake a movie thats already been…wait nevermind, that’s all Hollywood does these days. But seriously, no Khan, no Spock’s half-brother, no Borg, no Klingons. Let try something like…oh I don’t know…an original villain. Just a thought.
November 9th, 2011 at 10:54 am
There are some movies that you just don’t remake and WoK is one of them. I thought that the whole idea of rebooting the franchise was to open up new stories to tell. Not to retell the old stories with new people and new special effects.
November 9th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
So just because there’s a chance that Khan is in it it is suddenly a retread of Wrath of Khan? In a rebooted universe Khan could literally have hundreds of backstories and still be (roughly) the same character (as the original movie proved with the Enterprise crew.)
November 11th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
See, I was kind of hoping Kal Penn would play Khan and go in search of the replicator with Sulu…
July 9th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Simply going through the op’s info readers will resonate with the above as it’s accurate and its good seeing a man thats telling it for us to think about