For anyone in the New York City area this week, a reliable source shares that CSI:NY is shooting at the Battery Park Heliport on Tuesday.  The time is unknown but probably a.m.  Gary should be there, but please keep in mind things like this are always subject to change.

Paramount announced yesterday that New Zealand actor Karl Urban (of Lord of the Rings, Comanche Moon, Doom, Xena) had been signed to play Dr. McCoy in the forthcoming Star Trek movie. Hopefully, this will put an end to the rumors (which we debunked some time ago) that Gary was in talks for the role.

(Plz no more email about this one, k? Thx.)

We’re still calling this rumor for now, but IGN is reporting that Gary is “close to being cast” in the next Star Trek movie. The part of McCoy is apparently a small one, so the main question seems to be whether filming could be juggled with Gary’s CSI:NY schedule.

Paramount plans to release the movie in December 2008.

Good grief… I go away for a few days and teh Internets (which is made of a series of tubes, you know) get all crazy with rumors about casting for Star Trek XI — which may be a Starfleet Academy story or “first adventure” story — or may not. We do know that it will be directed by JJ Abrams of Lost and Alias, and the studio apparently wants Matt Damon, Adrien Brody, Gary and James McAvoy as Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty, respectively.

IGN broke the story (such as it is) here and has more here, and you can read various rehashes about it here, here, and here.

A couple of notes of caution are in order — as IGN points out, Gary has a relatively small time window to do a film during his CSI:NY hiatus, and he already has other plans for that hiatus, including a USO tour. On the other hand, Star Trek and CSI are corporate siblings, of a sort, so maybe something can be worked out. Anyway, when we hear, we’ll pass it on!

Have you heard about the forthcoming re-imagining of Star Trek�by Lost’s J.J. Abrams? The plans are rumored to involve recasting the legendary original series characters, and blogger Chris Beaumont had some fun with the idea, suggesting that along with Matt Damon as Kirk and Billy Zane as Spock, none other than Gary Sinise would make a great Dr. McCoy.

According to a an article this morning, Chris isn’t the only one intersted in the Matt Damon idea, so who knows? I think the Trek franchise couldn’t be in better hands, myself, and I’d love to see Gary don a tricorder and a totally different kind of labcoat.