Roberto Orci, Transformers, Star Trek, and Amazing Spider-Man 2 Writer, Dies at 51

Roberto Orci, a prolific producer and writer of the Star Trek and live-action Transformers franchises, has died at 51 following a battle with kidney disease. It was reported Tuesday that the Mexican-American filmmaker died at his home in Los Angeles Feb. 25. A longtime collaborator of J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman, his co-creators on the 2008 sci-fi series Fringe, Orci co-wrote Paramount-based blockbusters including Mission: Impossible III (2006), Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007), Abrams’ Star Trek reboot (2009), and sequels Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016).

“He was a visionary storyteller with a boundless heart and a beautiful soul,” Orci’s brother, J.R. Orci said in a statement. “But beyond his creative talents, he was a compassionate friend who would put his life on hold to help a stranger and find room in his home for the most overlooked pup at the shelter.”

Orci’s credits date back to 1997 as a writer and co-executive producer on the Sam Raimi-produced Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spinoff, Xena: Warrior Princess, going on to serve as a writer and executive producer on Abrams’ Alias. His first feature film was Bay’s 2005 sci-fi thriller The Island, which he co-wrote with Caspian Tredwell-Owen and Kurtzman, his screenwriting partner on the Abrams-directed Mission: Impossible III, the first two Transformers movies, and the three Star Trek films between 2009 and 2016 set in the rebooted Kelvin Timeline.

After co-writing 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with Kurtzman and Jeff Pinkner, Orci was recruited to pen a third movie that was dated for 2016 but never materialized. He also received an executive producer credit on the sequel to 2012’s Spider-Man reboot and — along with Kurtzman, Pinkner, Daredevil creator Drew Goddard, director Marc Webb, and Spider-Man universe producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach — was tapped to join Sony’s brain trust overseeing Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4 and spinoffs like Venom and Sinister Six before those plans were scrapped.

In 2020, it was reported that Orci was scripting a mystery project for Sony’s new Spider-Man Universe, which it launched with 2018’s Venom. Orci’s most recent film credit was the 2017 reboot of The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, which Kurtzman directed.

Orci and Kurtzman also developed the Hawaii Five-0 reboot with Peter M. Lenkov for CBS, which aired 240 episodes between 2010 and 2020. The duo executive produced a pilot episode adapting Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez’s IDW comic book series Locke & Key with their fellow Transformers producer Steven Spielberg for Fringe network Fox, but Fox passed on picking it up to series.

As an executive producer, Orci co-developed the Hasbro animated series Transformers: Prime, as well as the short-lived, Gabriel Luna-led Matador, and executive produced the CBS series Scorpion and Limitless through K/O Paper Products, the production company Kurtzman and Orci co-founded in 2004.

In 2010, Orci, who was born and raised in Mexico City, wrote on the Star Trek fansite TrekMovie that he most identified with Spock in 2009’s Star Trek reboot because of his heritage as a Vulcan/human hybrid.

“I used [my personal life as inspiration] on [Star Trek] to track the life of Spock, who was born to parents from different cultures, as I was, and who was raised on a different planet, much as I was raised in a different country, faced racism, like I did, and had to learn the language and customs of his adoptive culture (Earth, the Federation), as I had to learn English and the ways of the USA,” Orci wrote at the time. “Inspiration also derived from my mother’s family, who were exiled from Cuba when Castro took over. Her home, in a sense, destroyed by a single figure. And my grandfather on Dad’s side was Diplomat, like Spock’s father.”

He continued, “My dad expected a much more serious career for me at first. When I dropped out of college (Vulcan Science Academy) to pursue a writing career (movie Starfleet), he did not think it was logical.”