It's a day of good and bad news for J.J. Abrams, fans and everyone involved with the production of Star Trek 2. On Friday, news broke that the long-rumored villainous Khan would in fact be featured in the sequel to Abrams' quasi-reboot of the franchise, a role that was expected to be played by Benicio Del Toro whose been in talks for the part over the last month.

Today, while it was announced that Peter Weller (RoboCop) is joining the cast in a supporting role, joining Alice Eve who's playing a new character, reports are also indicating that Benicio Del Toro has dropped out of the project.

Vulture has the scoop which explains that Del Toro's reps couldn't come to terms of a monetary figure with Paramount to star as Star Trek 2's villain so he's now out. What's more interesting is that the deal reportedly fell apart last Wednesday, two days before our friends at Latino Review dropped the news that Khan would be the film's villain - news that HitFix heard from Abrams is "not true."

Perhaps it was only "not true" because Abrams knew Del Toro was out, not explicitly denying that Khan is the villain of the film.

So, the good news is that Weller is involved, the bad is that Del Toro is not. The additional good/bad news - depending on your personal opinon - is that Vulture has also confirmed from their source that Khan is indeed the villain of the sequel.

For us, we're excited to see a new take on Khan and Del Toro seemed oddly perfect for the role. With him out, Abrams has a lot of work to do in filling that character role, especially with Star Trek 2 schedule to begin filming in a matter of weeks.

The timing of the Weller news is convenient, almost serving as a cushion for the Del Toro news. If you believe Khan will feature in Star Trek 2, who do you believe could offer an interesting new portrayal of the character originally played by Ricardo Montalban?

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Star Trek 2 hits theaters on May 17, 2013.

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Source: Vulture