Star Trek: Joe Cornish rumoured to be the favourite to direct the third film According to a report by Deadline, British filmmaker Joe Cornish is the favourite to direct the next instalment of the Star Trek franchise. It had long been presumed that JJ Abrams, the director of the first two films of the reboot, would be leaving the series to concentrate on directing Star Wars: Episode VII - and the new developments appear to confirm this. Another report from Variety has suggested that Cornish was offered the chance to direct the movie in May but turned it down. The same report stresses that no plot details have yet been released and that no formal offer has been made. Cornish initially made his name as part of the comedy duo, Adam and Joe, before releasing his debut film, Attack the Block, in 2011. The sci-fi thriller wasn't a box-office hit but was admired by both critics and Hollywood executives. The director has, however, co-written the scripts of several high-profile action films in the past. These include Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and the forthcoming Marvel movie, The Ant-Man, and were both written with his friend and collaborator, Edgar Wright. In recent years, Cornish's name has been linked to a host of other big-budget productions, such as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Die Hard 5. The director admitted in 2011 that he had turned the opportunity to direct Die Hard down because, "it would have been to big a step to take" at that moment in his career. Cornish's next project was set to be an adaptation of Neal Stephenson's seminal cyber-punk novel, Snow Crash, but the film is still in development.