Funny how the business has shifted from “I don’t comment on rumors” to flat out lying in the last few years. Well, hopefully this news will shed some light on the winding and sometimes not-so-long road that a good scoop will take on its way to being confirmed. Last week, our good friend at Bad Ass Digest reported that an early draft of the Star Trek 3 script included a key scene for William Shatner’s Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. Then, within a day or two, both Orci and Shatner commented on the rumor. While Orci was more coy with his reply, Shatner took to twitter to dismissively shoot it down while implying it was nothing more than a publicity stunt by the nefarious filmmakers. 

You know, because simply saying nothing at all, or “No comment,” has fallen out of the PR playbook.

However, over the weekend Shatner came clean. He revealed that not only was he aware of the Star Trek 3 sequence for he and OG Spock, but he had been personally contacted about it by J.J. Abrams some time ago. Shatner told the crowd at Wizard World Nashville Comic Con that Abrams called and said, “I’m calling because the director of Star Trek, the next movie, has had an idea where you might be involved, so I’m calling to find out whether you would be interested.” Shatner claims he responded by saying, “It depends on what you do with the character, but I would be delighted.“

Then, this being an Abrams production, the notoriously secretive filmmaker told Shatner to keep this information under lock and key. Shatner took Abrams so to heart that he didn’t even tell his wife! 

But, alas, the cat is now out of the bag- thanks to Devin Faraci. “It’s all over the Internet that the director had held an interview and said they want Shatner and Nimoy to be in the next movie,” Shatner continued. “I’ll bet you J.J.’s frothing at the mouth at this point. So the news is out that they have an idea that they want Leonard and myself…they might want Leonard and myself in it. But I would love to do it,” he told the excited crowd.

But how are they going to pull this off? Your guess is as good as Shatner’s. The actor wonders the same thing: “But how do you get me fifty years later into the movie? I mean how do you rationalize it? I know it’s science fiction, but even I couldn’t come up with an idea. So that’s the news on that.“

So, there you have it. There’s a very real possibility that we’ll be seeing old school Kirk and Spock in Star Trek 3. The pressure is surely on now, too, because if Orci had ever thought of cutting the scene in a future draft of the script…he might feel forced to keep it now that it’s out there in the world like this.

Keep this in mind next time we, or one of our brother scoop sites, reports something and it gets an immediate, vehement denial. “No comment” is out. “It’s BS!” is in.

SOURCE: Comicbook.com