Well, it’s about damn time.

After months and months of speculation, director J.J. Abrams is now officially on board to helm the sequel to his hugely popular franchise restarter, Star Trek, according to Vulture.

Star Trek 2 is reportedly already underway in the pre-production, with a script set to be handed in by the end of the month, finally getting in front of cameras come winter of this year.

It always warms my heart to hear that another decent filmmaker isn’t interested in shooting a huge franchise movie in 3D, especially when that filmmaker is J.J. Abrams and the franchise is Star Trek.

Abrams said Paramount approached him about shooting the sequel to his 2009 revamped Star Trek film in 3D, but he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea, according to a recent interview.

“I have nothing against 3D in theory. But I’ve also never run to the movies because something’s in 3D,” Abrams told NY Mag. “[As for Trek], as soon as I read the script, if it says, ‘Somebody pushes a weapon toward the camera in a menacing way,’ and we think, ‘That’d be better in 3D!’… I dunno.”

Some depressing news for Star Trek fanatics worldwide. In an interview with The Toronto Sun, Leonard Nimoy apparently revealed that he now intends to retire from acting and even from all of those crazy conventions that have been such a huge part of his career.

Nimoy, who was finishing up his last episode as Dr. Bell on the popular J.J. Abrams TV show, Fringe, basically just explains that he’s been doing this longer than most of us have been alive, and it’s time for him to step away and enjoy his life.

Collider recently spoke to actor John Cho on the set of his television show, Flash Forward. During their conversation, both Harold and Kumar 3 and Star Trek 2 were touched on.

Unfortunately, the next Trek doesn’t have much going on as they wait for a script to be completed, but it would appear that another Harold and Kumar could indeed be closer than we thought.

Cho says that all is moving ahead smoothly, and that they could begin filming the movie by June. He indicates that it would take place a couple of years later and that this time around the holidays will be the main backdrop for the movie. In fact, it sounds like they want to make a legit holiday Harold and Kumar flick, which would actually be pretty awesome.

Coming Soon is reporting that Paramount Pictures has set June 29, 2012 as the release date for the untitled sequel to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek.

Back in April, it was reported that Paramount had hired Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof to write the screenplay to the sequel, which was at that time aiming for a Summer 2011 release [Read “˜Star Trek’ Sequel Confirmed; Possible 2011 Release]. Orci and Kurtzman penned the Star Trek script, while Lindelof served as producer.

The new June 2012 release date, which is tentative for now, is the Friday leading up to July 4th (which falls on a Wednesday), a major stake to claim, as the holiday week is notorious for high box office numbers.