Either Paramount thinks they have something good with J.J. Abrams upcoming reboot/sequel/prequel of "Star Trek" or they just want to hedge their bets so that if it becomes a hit (regardless of quality), they'll be ready to go as soon as possible with the inevitable sequel.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have been re-hired to write the sequel and while he served only as a producer on the first film, "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof is now in the mix in writing the script.  "There's obviously a lot of hubris involved in signing on to write a sequel of a movie that hasn't even come out yet," said Lindelof, "But we're so excited about the first one that we wanted to proceed."  Yep, that's what gets movies made—excitement about the first one.  If only producers and writers weren't so indifferent to their previous projects regardless of success…

However, they don't really have a story yet.  The Variety article says that they want to get the sequel out by Summer 2011 but the problem is that while the first film functions as an origin story, there are too many places for the sequel to go and they have to wait on "fan reaction", whatever that means.