More casting news on the next ‘Star Trek‘ movie! Filming for ‘Star Trek 2’ (aka ‘Star Trek 12’) will officially start this Thursday (January 12), so it’s no surprise that casting for some of the main roles are still rolling out. This time, J.J. Abrams announced at the TCA (Television Critics Association) Winter Press Tour that ‘Thor’s Joseph Gatt has been added to the list of actors appearing in the film.

Gatt (who is also a Brit and will be joining fellow countrymen Simon Pegg, Noel Clarke and Benedict Cumberbatch) played a Frost Giant in ’Thor’, the character Jon O’Quinn in the shelved NBC ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot and was recently seen as Agent Hawk in this season’s premiere episode of ‘Chuck.’ In usual Abrams style, no other information about his role was revealed. But looking at Gatt’s resume, most of his work involves some kind of physicality so it wouldn’t be too far off to guess that he may play someone with great physical power.

With all the casting news, Abrams did reiterate who would not be cast in this sequel…and that’s the actors from the original series. Abrams confirmed with Collider that this movie would continue to exist in its own timeline with no help from the original:

I think the job of the first movie was just to establish [the universe]. I don’t want to give anything away, but I would say that the burden we had in the first movie was just existing at all. With this movie, instead of having to stand on the shoulders of the original series, we built a little bit of a platform for us, with the last movie, to tell this story.

Although the movie will be shot on film (as Abrams explains, he wants to replicate the look of the first film and be able to film amorphically, which can’t be done in 3D), it will be converted to 3D for those who want to see the film that way:

I did not fight for the 3D. It was something that the studio wanted to do, and I didn’t want to do it. And then, when I saw the first movie converted in sections, I thought that it actually looked really cool. So, I was okay with their doing it, as long as I could shoot the movie the way I wanted to, in anamorphic film, and then let them convert it. So, those who want to see it in 3D, which looked pretty cool, can do it, and those that want to see it in 2D can do that too.

So Trekkies, the journey is about to begin! Filming for the yet to be titled sequel to the 2009 ‘Star Trek’ reboot will start in a couple days and will be in production for about 4 months. Then we’ll have to wait a year while it undergoes all the post production visual/computer effects and editing before it comes out in theaters on May 17, 2013. Are you as excited as I am? Let me know in the comments below!