Producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have been attached at the hip ever since they met each other in high school. Since then, they’ve worked together to bring us summer blockbusters like the Star Trek reboot and Cowboys & Aliens.

Currently, they’re hard at work on the still “Untitled Star Trek Sequel” and “Ender’s Game” (it’s Harry Potter Hunger Games sandwich basically). We got the chance to talk to the producing partners at the press junket for “People Like Us,” a family dramedy directed by Kurtzman and co-written by Orci.

Check out what they had to say about the forthcoming projects.

Roberto Orci on Star Trek 2 –

“Part of the difficulty was knowing when to actually dig into it. The studios sometimes want you to have the story before the first movie comes out. For it to actually feel as relevant as we wanted it to feel, we took our time. We sat on a story that we had for a while and waited to see if it still felt relevant a year or two later, after we’d all gone through a bunch of stuff. And it still did. The hardest part was being patient and kicking the tires of what our instinct was. Not just writing the momentum of the studio being happy with us and the nice reaction we got. It’s very easy to get overconfident and go, “Anything we say next is going to be Star Trek.” You want to mitigate against that and be your own check. After that, it was agreeing…”

“Since we freed it from the original time line we had narrative freedom, which is sometimes worse. Absolute freedom is sometimes scarier than what you have to do.”

Robert Orci on Ender’s Game –

“I haven’t seen the movie cut together yet. We haven’t seen it cut together yet, but one of the reasons the movie never got made in 20 years is because Orson Scott Card never supported it sufficiently. So finally, with his narrative support, hopefully we’re on the right track. Getting him is like getting Mr. Spock in the first movie.”

Chris Pine on Star Trek 2 –

“Generally speaking, the more money is involved, the more people are expecting and hoping that it’s not going to fail. If you’re a part of that process, of whether it’s going to fail or succeed, you hope that it does well. There’s only so much as an actor you can do. People are either going to respond to it or not, and I would drive myself crazy if I tried to control it any more than that. I just want people to come and watch it and like it. On the second Star Trek, we tried to do a really good job. I often think that critics think we try to make bad films. They think we want to spend 5 months of our lives making something bad. We always go out with the best of intentions, whether it’s fluffy comedy, drama or whatever. It’s always in the effort of, “Please come, like it, enjoy it, take something away.”

Source: Latino-Review