Cinefantastique Online

In a nice rundown of news from the San Diego Comic-Con, Variety tells us that Leonard Nimoy will return as Mr. Spock in the upcoming Star Trek film being developed by J. J. Abrams. Zachary Quinto (Heroes) will play a younger version of the character, suggesting that the script by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Transformers) will indeed be a prequel showing the origin of the original crew of the Enterprise. Abrams says he is “desperately trying” to squeeze William Shatner into the film. Paramount plans a release on December 25, 2008.

Also mentioned in the article are news of Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, and the “tentatively titled Cloverfield.” The latter is a monster movie that Abrams is producing, which is scheduled to bow on January 18. The teaser trailer recently generated quite a bit of interest when it appeared before Transformers; by not identifying the title, the trailer created an air of mystery that had fans on the Internet desperately trying to figure out what the movie was.

“We need our own monster movie,” said Abrams, adding that he conceived the idea for the pic after seeing how popular Godzilla still is in Japan. “King Kong is adorable, but I’ve wanted a great monster movie for so long.”

Abrams declined to disclose pic’s actual title, but shot down online rumors that it will be called “Monstrous.”