Trek Two: The primary players behind the Star Trek reboot won’t have to sweat out the box-office returns come May 8: A sequel, bringing back screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof (who just co-produced the first one), and producer J.J. Abrams (who directed the first) has already been confirmed. The film is tentatively scheduled for a summer 2011 release. According to Kurtzman, storylines have been discussed but “we are waiting to see how audiences respond next month.†We have a feeling that means Jar Jar Binks won’t be coming back. [Variety]
Reunited: Drew Barrymore has signed on for the romantic comedy Going the Distance opposite Justin Long. The two play a young couple in a long-distance relationship who find out that, you guessed it, long-distance relationships are hard. As suggested by some unfortunate part of our hippocampus, and confirmed by the Internet, yes, these two used to date in real life. [Variety]
Yo, Dre, I Got Something to Say: Ice Cube is all set for the action-comedy Ride Along. Cube stars as a police officer who takes his sister’s upper-crust, white psychiatrist fiancé on an attempted relationship-sabotaging ride along. Ah, another lovely anti-interracial-dating comedy! Also, as far as we can tell, this is the first time O’Shea Jackson has played a cop, so we’d just like to remind him that, once upon a time, Ice Cube would have swarmed on any muthafucka in the blue uniform. [Variety]
Bettany, Man of the Cloth: Paul Bettany is following up the supernatural thriller Legion with horror-Western Priest, which, like Legion, will be directed by Scott Stewart. It sounds like The Searchers but with more bloodsucking: Set in a world where the battle between man and vampire has been raging for centuries, it features Bettany as a warrior priest tracking down a crew of vampires who have kidnapped his niece. Warrior priest?! Can this please be a real thing now? [HR]
I Am Lucy: Lucy Lawless is going back to basics: she’s all set for fantasy series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, from Xena creators Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi. Lawless played Xena from 1995 to 2001, so it’s cool she’s going back to the genre now, because she got to spend all the time in between doing, uh, all those other things she was doing. [Variety]
Make Sure to Pick Them Up Afterward: Rancid has wrapped up its seventh studio album (and first in six years), Let the Dominoes Fall, and will release it June 2 on Hellcat/Epithath. Dominoes was recorded at George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound Studio in San Francisco with the band’s latest lineup, featuring relatively new drummer Brandon Steineckert and longtime bounty hunter Boba Fett. [Billboard]