Andy Weir has fallen on his sword over remarks he made about Star Trek.
Weir, the author of Project Hail Mary, told Star Trek EP Alex Kurtzman in a just-posted open letter: “I was trying to be funny, but in retrospect it comes off as disrespectful and mean.”
He said his quotes made on the Critical Drinker pod were “taken out of context as salacioius sound bytes” and he “was trying to be self-deprecating.”
Weir had on the pod made a series of statements about Paramount‘s handling of the Star Trek universe and claimed he had a pitch turned down by Trek EP Kurtzman.
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“And here’s another thing: I pitched a Star Trek show to Paramount and I was on Zoom with the showrunners with all the shows and spent a lot of time talking to [Kurtzman],” Weir said on the pod. “He, as a person, is a really nice guy. But at the same time, those shows are s**t. He is a nice guy, but they didn’t accept my pitch so, you know, f**k ’em.”
His apology just posted on Facebook said he also stressed “how much I like you as a person and what a nice guy you are” to Kurtzman. “Anyway, if you want to talk about it in real time – even if it’s just to rip me a new one – I’m happy to hop on the phone or zoom,” he added.
Weir’s comments had earlier drawn ire from scribes including Don Winslow, the author behind the source material for Crime 101.
Weir wrote the Project Hail Mary novel on which the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller box office hit was based. The sci-fi pic, starring Ryan Gosling as a school teacher who wakes aboard a spacecraft with amnesia, has been a winner for Amazon MGM Studios, delivering some of the best numbers for a non-franchise movie in some time.