For his latest project, a film about the world financial meltdown, Zachary Quinto is set to play a character "significantly different" than Heroes' Sylar (above) or Spock, his Star Trek alter ego.

So what's the next, ahem, logical progression for the co-star of one of the biggest summer blockbusters? If you're Zachary Quinto - Star Trek's new Spock - it's something completely different.

Within the next several weeks, Quinto hopes to be producing and starring in an as-yet-untitled film about the world financial meltdown.

"We'll be shooting in New York," he says. "I would play a sort of young financial analyst who comes from a rocket science background and applies that knowledge to the financial world.

"It's a significantly different character than either Spock or (Heroes') Sylar," he says. "It has elements of Glengarry Glen Ross."

GREEN-BLOODED WITH ENVY: Speaking of Trek, Bryan Singer (Superman Returns, X-Men) admits he ate his heart out a little when his buddy, J.J. Abrams, got the Trek assignment.

"I thought he did an incredible job, but you know, I was the fan. I'm more a fan of the original show than all the others, even though I made a couple of movies with (The Next Generation's) Patrick Stewart.

"So I would have loved to have made that movie. I talked to J.J. about this not long ago, before I saw the film, and of course he's not an old Trek fan like I was. And I sometimes wonder if my fandom would have been a detriment to how I made the film. When I made the X-Men films, I was not an X-Men aficionado, which upset a lot of fans going in, but it was the right move. And I think J.J. took the same approach."

3-D IS SCOTT-FREE: Don't expect to see Tony Scott's films in IMAX or 3-D anytime soon. In fact, for all the techno flash of his thrillers, the director The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Man on Fire and Top Gun, among many others, sounds decidedly old-school about his approach. "Now we're going into the age of HD. That's the wave of the future. But a week before shooting, I went from HD back to film. Kodak produced this (film) stock called the HD killer. We went back to film because it's still that much more mobile. I can pick up a camera and run with it ... Maybe a third of the movie is in HD. The aerial stuff is in HD. With Deja Vu, we did half in HD."

THIRD TIME LUCKY? Make $419 million worldwide and your movie's still considered a box-office letdown by some.

Such is life -- or business, anyway -- for producer Mark Johnson, currently prepping the next sequel in The Chronicles of Narnia series following The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Prince Caspian (2008).

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe worked phenomenally well and Prince Caspian worked very well. It's funny it's seen in a different light (but it still made) just under half a billion dollars."

Still, that wasn't enough to ensure more Narnia movies at Disney, so Voyage of the Dawn Treader, due out December 2010, is instead being produced by Fox studios.

"I'm looking forward to doing the third one," Johnson says. "Hopefully from every movie you learn not just something, but a lot. Each movie is so completely different from the one preceded it and the one that comes after it. Sometimes you work with a cameraman who is brilliant, but is just not appropriate for the next (movie); it's mix and match."