Chris Pine has ... big ... shoes ... to ... fill ... as Capt. James T. Kirk in the coming J.J. Abrams' big-screen take on Star Trek. Pine wrote to original Kirk William Shatner, who wished him luck.

PARK CITY, Utah -- Chris Pine is boldly going where one man has gone before.

And that has William Shatner fuming.

Not because Pine has been cast as a young Capt. Kirk in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, mind you, but because the indomitable Canadian ham -- a.k.a. The Shat -- hasn't been invited to beam aboard the $130-million production.

"I know he wants to be part of it and I know they're still talking that he might be part of it," Pine tells Sun Media. "I don't know where it stands."

(Cloverfield maestro Abrams has explained Shatner's Kirk isn't in the film because he was killed off a decade ago and to resurrect him for a cameo would be, well, illogical.)

So what gives between the two Kirks? Are Pine and Shatner going to shoulder-flip each other to death? Understandably, that's a scenario Pine would rather avoid.

"I wrote him a letter at the beginning of the process just to explain my feelings about the character ... I just tried to explain my respect for what he'd done. I want him to be proud of what I do because the man has been involved with it for going on 40 years. He wrote me back and said he hopes the movie goes well and he'd like to meet sometime, which I would love. But you know, he's a busy man."

As is Pine, who managed to squeeze in a break from filming Trek, due out at Christmastime, for the premiere of his Sundance entry, Bottle Shock. For now, the 27-year-old is still able to move about the Park City streets in relative anonymity -- even though he knows by this time next year that will probably have changed.

"What happens will happen. I'm really too neurotic to think about it."

For Pine -- who is, for the sake of trivia buffs, the son of veteran CHiPs actor Robert Pine -- the Kirk role arose at what he calls "the best of times, the worst of times."

That's because, after years of supporting parts in such films as Smokin' Aces and The Princess Diaries 2, he had just been cast opposite George Clooney in the thriller White Jazz.

Pine says deciding between the two was "agonizing. (White Jazz director Joe Carnahan) is a great friend and a great collaborator ... It was a great character role and I'd have had the chance to act with George Clooney. And then I got presented with this opportunity, which is really a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

He was finally swayed by, of all things, his own fear of anchoring a flagship franchise so closely identified with Shatner. "It's such a challenge. It's so scary. But everyone says the scarier it is, the more you should do it."

Plot details about the new Trek are predictably scarce since, as he did with Cloverfield, Abrams has shrouded the project in secrecy. Still, it is known Eric Bana portrays a villainous time-travelling Romulan and Leonard Nimoy's older Spock meets up with his younger self, played by Heroes' Zachary Quinto. "Everybody talks about (Abrams') secrecy and it can be claustrophobic while you're making it," Pine says. "While I'm talking to you I'm going through my head of what I can and cannot say. I've signed so many confidentiality agreements at this point I don't know where I am legally."

Then again, it's hard to argue against the same strategy that just led the low-budget Cloverfield to a $41-million weekend. "It does create a great deal of suspense ... You know, now everyone's an amateur filmmaker and they can tell you everything about the process and it diminishes the magic of what we do.

"And I think J.J. is going above and beyond in this age of the telephoto lens and Google (to protect that)."

More Artists