I am reading a book about the history of Star Trek at the moment. In the days of TOS in order to calm tensions between Nimoy and Shatner TPTB created a "Favoured Nations" clause in their contracts which basically means that whatever one of them gets the other one has to get the same. This proceeded to the TOS movies and is the reason Shatner directed Star Trev V. So does that mean we need to see Shatner in one of these new movies?
A part was written for Shatner at the end of the last movie, but he wasn't interested in participating. You can read it at the end of the early script available here: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Trek.html (just search "Shatner" to skip to his bit)
That's the first time I ever read that. I'd always thought it was Spock Prime who was supposed to be listening whistfully to Kirk Prime's holo-card as he watched Kirk being given command of the Enterprise from afar. Can anyone imagine the discussions on this board about the rightness or wrongness of it if Spock Prime really had given that card to Spock to play? Scrolling down the script, there are some interesting lines in Alternate Scene D that the writers wrote for the directer to intersperse throughout the movie as he saw fit.
Most fascinating for me is that Spock Prime intentionally opens a second black hole to go back in time, with the intention of saving Romulus. The only allusion to the movie being set in an alternate reality is one of the answers during Spock's schooling - "anything that can happen does happen, in equal and parallel universes"
No. The "favored nations" thing was something they used to negotiate parity in their contracts for the Star Trek movies. If Paramount had declined, for example, to let Shatner direct Star Trek 5 all the Shat could have done would have been refuse to participate in the project. There's no way he could extort anything from the studio beyond that. Just because Abrams hired Nimoy to appear in a movie doesn't entitle Shatner to a job in another.
Shatner in the next film. Not likely. First, he always wants too much money for a cameo. Second, he's always difficult to work with (time constraints and creative control). I don't recall any contracts stating that what Nimoy got Shatner also did. I think the Shat just threw enough temper tantrums to get his way and left the lawyers out of it.