Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci
It’s becoming more and more difficult to find a major pop-culture blockbuster that hasn’t got the fingerprints of Roberto Orci and his writing/producing partner Alex Kurtzman all over it. They’ve been part of everything from Transformers to the reboot of Star Trek, from bombs like Cowboys and Aliens (we blame Jon Favreau!) to Xena: Warrior Princess. And in just the last couple of weeks alone, two more developments:
Star Trek
Orci and Kurtzman have just signed on to rewrite the sequel to the new Spider-Man reboot, even though the first of the new series hasn’t even been released yet. Obviously Sony has high hopes for the new version, and they’re bringin’ in the guys who have managed to breathe life (and zillions of dollars) into other franchises that showed far less promise. On the heels of that news came an announcement from Fox: they have authorized one final 13-episode season of Fringe, in what co-creator J.J. Abrams says, “will allow the series to conclude in a wild and thrilling way.” So score another one for Orci and Kurtzman: five seasons is a pretty good run for a show that never actually built up the ratings base to deserve it, though it has remained one of the most consistently interesting sf series on the tube.
Fringe
And those projects, of course, are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this ridiculously prolific team. They’ve got the moderately successful and recently renewed Hawaii Five-0 on CBS, and two handfuls of other projects in development as well, from a TV movie from Jon Favreau and Seth Green called Secret Cabinet, about Presidential level investigators of the strange, to potential reboots of everything from Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series (Without Remorse) to the hoary old private eye spoof Matt Helm, that starred Dean Martin the first time around.
The hits just keep on happenin’ for Orci and Kurtzman, in a delightfully relentless way.
