J.J. Abrams Profiled In Sunday's New York Times

Tomorrow's edition of The New York Times will feature a lengthy profile of director J.J. Abrams by Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff. The article is already online here. Check out a snippet below:

"It wasn't as if they offered it to me outright and I passed," he said of his conversations with Lucasfilm. "It was early discussions, and I just felt like it was not the right thing to even consider." But "a number of weeks, if not months, went by in between those calls," he said, "and it was easier to actually think about."

For his "Star Trek" colleagues, this proved a surprising and bittersweet development. Mr. Lindelof, who was in an editing suite with Mr. Abrams when news of his "Star Wars" deal appeared online, said his reaction "was the same, probably, as most people's, which is that he said he wasn't going to do it."

Mr. Lindelof said he was "profoundly thrilled" that there would be new "Star Wars" movies and that Mr. Abrams would be directing one. But seeing Mr. Abrams poised to jump to a new swashbuckling, intergalactic epic, Mr. Lindelof seemed unsure if audiences would still care about the swashbuckling, intergalactic epic they just finished.

"I wonder if ‘Star Wars' is now going to eclipse ‘Star Trek,' " Mr. Lindelof said, "so that when this movie comes out and people are asking us questions, is everyone going to be asking me about ‘Star Wars'?"

Related Stories: