Boldly in attendance at Dubai’s Star Trek Beyond press conference

Actors Chris Pine (left) and Zachary Quinto. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / WireImage

Expect shooting on Star Trek Beyond to start anytime soon – executive producer Jeffrey Chernov, director Justin Lin, screen writer Doug Jung and actors Simon Pegg and Chris Pine led a press conference at Burj Al Arab on Wednesday, September 30 to announce the start of the filming schedule in Dubai.

At the event, attended by media from around the region and Europe, Chernov said that the experience of shooting Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol was crucial in choosing to come back to Dubai, while Pegg confessed he would never take the director's chair: "I'll never direct a star trek film. I'd be useless."

The third chapter in the rebooted Star Trek franchise will be filming in Dubai over the next few weeks, with the city standing in as a "vertical" alien city.

For the shoot, the Starship Enterprise cast will be joined by about 1,000 extras who were selected after a three-day casting call in Dubai Studio City in August (many of the successful applicants are expected to play aliens). The scale of the casting suggests this will be the biggest movie shoot to hit town since the Tom Cruise action-thriller Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011).