Deadline Hollywood and The Hollywood Reporter are reporting today that reboot writer Roberto Orci will no longer be directing 2016’s Star Trek 3, a position for which he nabbed back in May.

Deadline’s Mike Fleming, Jr. reports:

Roberto Orci is beaming off the bridge of the Starship Enterprise on ‘Star Trek 3.’ Rampant rumors are swirling and I’ve confirmed there is fire behind the smoke that he won’t be directing.

I even hear that Edgar Wright and others are on a short list to take the job.  Orci stays on the project as producer.

This is a major development for a film set to begin filming in the coming spring — and possibly a major setback, as Paramount is pushing to have the film ready for the Star Trek franchise’s fiftieth anniversary in 2016.

TrekCore has heard rumors for some time that the Trek 3 pre-production machine has been having some issues, with reports that the film’s art department was put on hiatus in late October, a shutdown confirmed by Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci today:

[Sources] tell me that the script Orci was working on saw the Enterprise, the Vulcans and a new alien race competing to get a time travel device. The Vulcans want to go back and stop the destruction of their planet, and the time travel schtick is what would allow Chris Pine and William Shatner to share the screen. Is that still going to be the plot of the movie – a MacGuffin that could wipe out the previous two films?

I’ve been in touch with some folks and it seems like the script was one of the problem factors. Paramount shut the production down last month, sending home all the design people while they battled over the direction of the screenplay.

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10:15PM EST update:

I’m hearing the TREK 3 script is dumped, which I’m assuming means McKay and Payne are out as well. Best of luck to those guys, if so.

— Devin Faraci (@devincf) December 6, 2014

Source: Deadline Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter, Badass Digest