It's all but confirmed that Roberto Orci will make his directorial debut on the untitled Star Trek 3 — but he's still emphasizing the "unconfirmed" aspect.

"I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch. The studio has yet to even read the script," Orci told Collider. "I can't even think anything about the future until I give [Paramount] a script and they greenlight it. Until that happens, everything else is just a rumor."

But what happens if and when the studio greenlights the new Sscript?

"If I’m lucky enough that Paramount loves the script and that we go forward, it’ll be because I have loved Star Trek for so long and the idea of having seen one of the best guys in the business direct two of them already, and to have seen it from the vantage point of a producer too, I know where a lot of the challenges are and where a lot of the fun is," he said. "If we’re lucky enough that everything goes right, then I’ll start to feel the pressure.  Once it’s really happening, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, the 50th anniversary!  Holy moly!’  As a writer, I feel the pressure as the returning screenwriter to this franchise.  I feel it at the story level."

Star Trek 3 is expected to hit theaters in 2016 in time for the franchise's 50th anniversary, but no official date has been announced.