Roberto Orci

Roberto Gaston Orci is a producer and screenwriter from Mexico City who, along with writing and production partner Alex Kurtzman, wrote the script for, the eleventh film in the Trek franchise. They also served as executive producers on the film. Orci and Kurtzman also produced and (along with Damon Lindelof) wrote the screenplay for the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. Orci also contributed to the Star Trek video game and serves as creative consultant on the ongoing Star Trek comic book.

Orci and Kurtzman began as writers on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which led to their becoming writers and co-executive producers on Xena: Warrior Princess. Before Star Trek, both Orci and Kurtzman worked with Star Trek producer and director J.J. Abrams on the television series Alias and the 2006 film Mission: Impossible III. Orci and Kurtzman also wrote the screenplays for 2005's The Legend of Zorro (featuring Mary Crosby, with editing by Stuart Baird and music by James Horner) and the films The Island (2005, which featured Ethan Phillips, Glenn Morshower, and Randy Oglesby) and Transformers (2007, featuring Andy Milder, Glenn Morshower, W. Morgan Sheppard, Michael Shamus Wiles, and the voice of Robert Foxworth), and its sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009, featuring the voice of Tony Todd and Robert Foxworth).

They did the final re-write of the screenplay for the film adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novel Watchmen, which stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Stephen McHattie, and Matt Frewer. They also developed the science fiction/horror series Fringe with J.J. Abrams, which they executive produce with Abrams and Bryan Burk. 

Orci and Kurtzman are set to start writing a film adaptation of Whitley Strieber's novel 2012: The War for Souls, which will again team them with Michael Bay. They are also the writers of the upcoming political thriller The 28th Amendment, which is set to star and. Orci and Kurtzman wrote the script for this movie in the late 1990s. They recently re-wrote the script, which is now in production at Warner Bros. Pictures. 

Orci considers himself a Trekkie, having grown up with a Trekkie uncle (who actually assisted Orci while he was working on the script for Star Trek). Orci has collected a lot of Trek memorabilia over the years and owns many Trek novels, with his favorites being Prime Directive and Spock's World. Although he enjoys all of the Star Trek series, his favorite (and the one through which he really started getting into Trek) is Star Trek: The Next Generation, which he called "the best television show from [his] lifetime".


 * "There has never been anything on TV that has made sci-fi as relatable and respectable as The Next Generation. The humanity of the situation was never lost in the technobabble. The sci-fi and the character was always intertwined brilliantly and it is an example of how to approach all genre. All genre needs to have as big a character component as it has a genre component; be it sci-fi, be it fantasy, whatever."

Orci's involvement with Star Trek began in 2005 when he received a phone call from a Paramount Pictures executive asking if he had any ideas for Star Trek. 

In 2007, The Hollywood Reporter named Orci the 35th most powerful Latino in Hollywood in their Latino Power 50, "a guide to those [Latino] writers, producers, directors, actors and executives who, through their ideas, perspectives and experiences, are changing show business as we know it." 

In addition to writing, Orci and Kurtzman currently produce films through their production company, Kurtzman/Orci (or K/O). Some of the films being produced by K/O include 2008's, Eagle Eye, and the 2009 romantic comedy, The Proposal.

In Orci and Kurtzman were nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Writing for Star Trek. That year, Orci and Kurtzman began executive producing the Emmy Award-winning animated series Transformers: Prime. The show features the voices of numerous Star Trek veterans, such as Jeffrey Combs, James Horan, Tania Gunadi, Frank Welker, Tony Todd, Clancy Brown, Nolan North and Dwayne Johnson. Subsequently, in May 2011, Orci announced that he and Kurtzman had proposed a new Star Trek animated series to CBS.

Orci is a conspiracy theorist. Damon Lindelof said "It's impossible to know Bob Orci and not get involved in those conversations. He believes very passionately in a lot of that stuff and has done a tremendous amount of research. I think you can start it as a casual interlude but it can become intense rather quickly. Personally speaking, I've known Bob feels that way for a long time. I'm not sure it influenced any of the storytelling in [Star Trek Into Darkness]."