Chris Pine is informed to have turned down talks to play in "White Jazz" for the role of James T. Kirk in "Star Trek."
- Oct 16, 2007
AceShowbiz - The principal cast lineup for J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" finally is completed now that there has come confirmation on who to play Captain James T. Kirk. "White Jazz" director Joe Carnahan has indicated via his official blog that Chris Pine has dropped talks for the role of Junior Stemmons in order to play the USS Enterprise commanding officer.
"I've been talking to him this past week and knew how tough the decision had to be for him," so Carnahan wrote. "You don't get opportunities like that often and I told him as long as he could control as much of that process as possible and not get sucked into doing lesser sequels as a result of taking this gig, then good luck and God bless."
Pine had to choose one of the two offers due to scheduling conflict since "Trek" is slated to shoot from November 2007 through March 2008 while "Jazz" is set for a mid-January start. With his decision, he thereby joins Simon Pegg and John Cho as the latest addition in the highly-anticipated project, the latter two getting billed as Scotty and Sulu, respectively.
Though unable to submit Pine in "Jazz" cast, Carnahan, however, did admit that he has already slotted the Los Angeles-born actor in for "Killing Pablo", his biopic about notorious Colombian drug dealer Pablo Escobar, set to go into production in June 2008. Pine, who initially built his path in entertainment industry through some TV series like "ER" and "CSI: Miami", was seen last year in Lindsay Lohan-starrer "Just My Luck" and most recently played a neo-Nazi assassin in Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces."
