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J.J. Abrams to talk up 'Star Trek: Into Darkness' via Facebook Live

The social network is live-streaming a conversation with the director, along with original Mr. Sulu George Takei, Friday evening, by way of its Facebook Live site.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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Edward Moyer
2 min read
Paramount Pictures

Beam -- er, stream -- me up, Scotty. And do it via Facebook.

The social network is powering up its Facebook Live site Friday evening to give Trekkies, Trekkers, and Trekyamacallits of all stripes the chance to transport the original Mr. Sulu into their living room -- along with J.J. Abrams, director of the soon-to-be-released Trek flick, "Star Trek: Into Darkness."

Old Sulu, new Sulu. George Takei, left, from the original TV series, and John Cho, from "Into Darkness." georgetakei.com; Paramount Pictures

Abrams and George Takei will be interviewed live on the Net at 5:30 PT tonight by "Saturday Night Live's" Andy Samberg, with viewers invited to submit questions in real time.

Facebook Live debuted in the summer of 2010 as a way for the social network to tout its new products and publicize the activity happening at the company, such as airing interviews with people who stop by its headquarters.

The site features a handful of archived streams, including events with celebs of one sort or another, from Barack Obama to Shimon Peres to Oprah Winfrey to Rihanna.

(A Facebook rep told TechCrunch earlier today that the social network plans to ramp up its use of Facebook Live "to give fans an opportunity to interact with public figures and give the public figures a global platform to present how they are using Facebook [or are engaged in conversations happening on Facebook] in an authentic way" -- bracketed material TechCrunch's.)

A couple of product-announcement events appear on the site as well: the March 7 launch of the social network's revamped, image-friendly News Feed, and last month's unveiling of the "Facebook phone" (also known as the Home app).

"Star Trek: Into Darkness" premieres May 16. Here's a little trailer action, just to get your Trekker/Trekkie/whatevs heart pumpin':

Correction, May 11 at 8:40 a.m. PT: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the actor who played Sulu in the original "Star Trek" television series. He is George Takei. The author deeply regrets the error and has submitted his resignation to Starfleet Command.

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