J.J. Abrams Finally Decides To Direct ‘Star Trek 2,’ ‘G.I. Joe 2’ Get Its July 29, 2012 Date

The long wait for this inevitable piece of news is over. After playing coy forever, and now riding high off the success of “Super 8,” Deadline reveals that J.J. Abrams has finally committed to directing the long awaited “Star Trek 2.” But as expected, his delay and quest for the right story and script have caused plans at Paramount to move around a bit.

As the director himself suggested last month, as the filming start date for “Star Trek 2” kept getting pushed further and further back, the studio date of July 29, 2012 kept looking more and more unrealistic. So here’s what’s gonna happen. The ‘G.I. Joe’ sequel — now titled “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” — will now move up from its previous date of August 10, 2012 to fill in for Abrams’ film. This puts a bit more pressure on director Jon Chu as the film is still casting — Joseph Mazzello joined as Mouse yesterday — and sets the clock ticking on the film he’ll now have to deliver in just over a year.

As for “Star Trek 2,” at the end of May, writer Roberto Orci revealed that development on the script and story had temporarily stopped as everyone was waiting to hear from Abrams. “Just been waiting for JJ to be free to really decide if he likes the story and hear his suggestions before we finish the script. Once he says go, we’ll have it in no time. Meanwhile, our outline is detailed enough (70+ pages!) to do some prep :),” Orci posted to Trek Movie.

So the plan now is for Abrams to sit down with the writers and get everything prepared for a January 2012 start date with a late 2012 (we doubt it considering how crowded it already is) or summer 2013 (much more realistic) release. There’s no word on 3D — which Paramount has already been asking Abrams about — but it’s a pretty sure bet that the principal cast are now all clearing their calendars for the early part of 2012.

Set your phasers on stun, folks.