William Shatner Discusses Involvement in 'Star Trek' Movie

— -- William Shatner may be appearing in the new "Star Trek" movie after all.

The actor, who starred as Captain Kirk in the original TV series, told fans at 2014 Wizard World Nashville Comic Con that producer J.J. Abrams called him about possibly appearing in the next installment of the movie franchise.

"He said, 'I'm calling Bill, because [Roberto Orci] the director of 'Star Trek,' the next movie, had an idea where you might be involved. So, I'm calling to find out whether you'd be interested," he said. "I said, 'Interested? Oh yeah.' I said, 'Only if it's meaningful.' "Because when Leonard [Nimoy, who played Spock] was in the first movie, I said to Leonard, 'You know your role, when you go back in time and you're still old!'"

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Shatner, 83, tweeted last week, "I don't know anything about the current gossip. Nobody has contacted me. Right now it's just rhetoric to cause hype." However, he said during his Comic Con speech that Abrams had sworn him to secrecy about the call at first.

"I said, 'J.J., I won't tell my wife. I won't tell anybody," he said. "[But then] it's all over the Internet that the director held an interview and said they wanted Shatner and Nimoy to be in the next movie!"

Still, the actor isn't sure what's going to happen or how, especially because he's not sure how the concept would work.

"How do you get me 50 years later into the movie? How do you rationalize it?" he asked. "I know it's science fiction, but even I couldn't come up with an idea. So that's the news on that."