In a comments thread on a Star Trek fan website, Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness writer Roberto Orci revealed that when the studio goes forward with the third installment in the rebooted franchise, they’ll do so without his script.

Orci had been expected to write, direct and produce the film, expected in theaters in 2016, but recently pulled out of directing, reportedly over disagreements with studio Paramount Pictures.

“I’m producing, nothing more or less,” Orci wrote in a comment on TrekMovie, where his username has been confirmed in the past.

This definitely makes this feel more…

Making a top films of the year list is hard. These things are so subjective, not to mention I have to remember my feelings about the various films I’ve seen this year — and I see lots of films. It’s made somewhat easier by the fact that if I have strong feelings about a film one way or the other, it tends to stick and or come back more quickly when I look over the list of films that were released this year.

There’s also the problem that there are simply too many films that come out in a year for me to see them all when budget and time-wise, I am only able to see one film a week most weeks.…

Now that Peter Jackson is done with his overlong trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit, that means it’s time for him to complain about how franchise driven Hollywood has become. That’s right, the man who gave us not just one, but two trilogies based on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien recently had an interview withMoviefone where he was asked about his desire to return to smaller films, and he said, “I’m absolutely happy to make smaller films. It’s what I want to do…So we want to go back and make some New Zealand stories.” But it’s what he said next that is going leave you raising an eyebrow or…

After the announcement that Bob Orci would no longer be manning the director’s chair for Star Trek 3, rumors began flying as to who would take his place. Many questions about the switch remain unanswered, but we finally know who will be the next leader of Trek on the silver screen. Justin Lin, who directed ‘Fast and Furious 6′ has reportedly taken over the role.

I have a bad feeling about this (wrong franchise for that language, I know). The spirit of Fast and Furious is not exactly what I want in a Trek film. I have recently been re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. There are a lot…

USA Today reports that the hacker group known as Guardians Of Peace issued a message last night, stating that “The Interview” could be released…but only if changes were made. Here is the anonymously posted message: 

This is GOP.

You have suffered through enough threats.

We lift the ban.

The Interview may release now.

But be carful.

September 11 may happen again if you don’t comply with the rules.

Rule #1: no death scene of Kim Jong Un being too happy

Rule #2: do not test us again

Rule #3: if you make anything else, we will be here ready to fight

There are conflicting reports of…

February has typically been a dumping ground for not-so-great films. But I want to believe that Kingsman is not a dumping ground film.

In Kingsman, Matthew Vaughn hopes to put a new twist on the super villain and spy flick. If you’re hoping to avoid spoilers, this trailer is probably not for you. But, it’s a comedy flick, so what’s to spoil. I’ll certainly be going to the theater for the laughs, not necessarily the plot. And it certainly looks to be pretty humorous and tongue-in-cheek.

On interesting thing I never took note of before, Mark Hamill has a part in this film. That’s… Read The Rest

Just a quick note to let you know what you can expect from MovieByte over the next couple weeks.

Today and tomorrow will be typical days for MovieByte. I’ll post a few items of interest to me. Joe and I will also be recording The MovieByte Podcast Tuesday evening for release Wednesday morning (Christmas Eve) as usual. We will be joined by Clark Douglas to talk about The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. As is usually the case, the production of the Podcast will take up all my time and energy and that will be the only thing to come out on Wednesday.

Thursday, Christmas Day, I will be taking…

On June 12th 2014, I visited the London set of Avengers: Age of Ultron. In October, we posted our on set interviews with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. Today we’ve been given the green light to publish our interview with Avengers series director Joss Whedon. Here is a short snippet from Joss explaining why he decided to come back for the sequel:

I didn’t actually want to make the film necessarily. I was ragged from the first one, and so I just turned off my brain. I was like, do not think of cool ideas for the next one. Just get through this. But after a few months when they talked…

Writer-producer Dean Devlin tells Nerd Report that he and director Roland Emmerich are currently working on just one of theIndependence Day sequels — and waiting on the third installment for now.

That means that when Stargate rolls around on Emmerich’s directing schedule, it may only have to wait for one Independence Day movie and not two.

“Unfortunately, we have to wait until we finish Independence Day for that,” Devlin said of the Stargate reboot. “Roland wants to direct that one too. Hopefully we go into that right afterwards.”

“He’d like to direct the first one. I don’t know if he…