After years of speculation as to what the plot would be of Star Trek Into Darkness, the J.J. Abrams-directed sequel to his blockbuster 2009 reboot, Paramount Pictures has released the film’s official synopsis today.

You can check it out here below.

Since winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his craftily-constructed heist thriller The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie has been one of Hollywood’s premiere go-to guys for injecting some extra class and intelligence into one of their E-ticket escapades. In addition to helping shape the shooting script for the original X-Men (though David Hayter ended up with sole screen credit), McQuarrie has also written films like Valkyrie, The Tourist, and next year’s The Wolverine. Between writing jobs he’s even directed a few films of his own, including the underrated 2000 action drama The Way of the Gun and the upcoming Jack Reacher, an adaptation of the Lee Child novel One Shot. Over the years he’s maintained a healthy working relationship with Tom Cruise, his Jack Reacher star, and even made credited or uncredited contributions to several of the Cruise’s recent projects such as last year’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and the currently-in-production sci-fi thriller All You Need is Kill. That relationship may have just napped McQuarrie his biggest directing assignment yet.

According to Mike Fleming, Jr. over at Deadline, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Entertainment are eyeing McQuarrie for the coveted assignment of directing the fifth Mission: Impossible movie, which is presently in the embryonic stages of development.

Showing an extensive preview for a major tentpole film is slowly becoming a trend. WB was the first to kick things off when they showed the first six minutes for The Dark Knight when I Am Legend was released, and they did it again for The Dark Knight Rises when Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol came out in theaters. Now other studios are following suit by getting into the business of showing off what to expect from their blockbuster films.

While we have yet to see anything that resembles a trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, Paramount has announced that audiences would be able to see a 9-minute preview this December of the new Trek before showings of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Now that we know that Michael Arndt has written a treatment for the new Star Wars trilogy, fans everywhere are talking about who they would like to direct Star Wars: Episode VII. Some of the names that have come up are J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, Steven Spielberg, Brad Bird, and Colin Trevorrow. Even Quentin Tarantino‘s name has been thrown into the mix. Now, a couple of them have actually added their input about the opportunity and some have taken themselves out of the running. Find out who below.

Spielberg has confirmed that he will not be directing Episode VII. In an interview with Access Hollywood, Spielberg said this: “No! No! It’s not my genre. It’s my best friend George [Lucas]”˜s genre.”

Conan O’Brien‘s nightly talk show on TBS is really becoming quite the hot spot for surprise major movie announcements. Hot on the heels of Will Ferrell announcing in March that an Anchorman sequel had been given the green light for a release sometime in 2013 comes the world premiere of finished footage from one of next summer’s hotly-anticipated motion picture events.

Last night J.J. Abrams stopped by Conan to discuss, among other things, his upcoming film Star Trek Into Darkness, the long-awaited sequel to his blockbuster 2009 reboot of the continuing voyages of the starship Enterprise, Star Trek. During the interview Abrams surprised O’Brien and sidekick Andy Richter with the news that he had wanted to bring with him the first footage from the movie to premiere on the show. Unfortunately Paramount Pictures had a slight problem with that, but after Abrams’ insistence the studio relented, but only on the condition that Abrams limit the footage shown to just three frames of film.

You can watch the video here below. The actual scene begins – and ends – at the 1:50 mark.