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(Guardian) - The relatively unknown Chris Pine is in talks to star as Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' back -to-basics Star Trek venture, according to US reports.

Pine, whose biggest roles so far have included a spot as a neo-Nazi assassin in Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces and as the male lead in flop Lindsay Lohan comedy Just My Luck, would join a production which already has its young Spock, Chekov and Uhura safely on-board.

Zachary Quinto, who played baddie Sylar in the hit TV series Heroes, is donning the Vulcan ears, with Anton Yelchin as the Russian navigating officer and Zoe Saldana as the communications officer. Eric Bana is in talks to play villain Nero, about whom not a lot is known at this stage.

 

Pine, 27, is reportedly the runaway favourite to play Kirk, with the only real issue being scheduling hangups. The actor is also being touted for a role opposite George Clooney in the forthcoming adaptation of James Ellroy's crime novel White Jazz, which is being made by his old friend Carnahan, and the timing of the projects may preclude one actor from appearing in both films.

There had been suggestions early in the casting process for the new Star Trek, which is due to hit cinemas on Boxing Day 2008, that actors as established as Matt Damon and Adrien Brody might be in line to board the Starship Enterprise. However Abrams, whose credits include Lost, Mission Impossible III and Alias, looks to be plumping for untried talent as he seeks to pump new blood back into a franchise which hasn't shown much sign of life since the halcyon days of Ricardo Montalban and those horrid brain slug parasites on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.