Despite tweeting out a denial that anybody had contacted him about Star Trek 3, William Shatner confirmed today that he had indeed been contacted about Star Trek 3 by none other than J.J. Abrams. However, Abrams asked him to keep it a secret, so he hadn’t initially said anything about it.

This weekend, Shatner has been appearing at the Wizard World Nashville Comic Con, which Comicbook.com is covering live.

Shatner said that while he was visiting Australia a couple weeks ago, J.J. Abrams called him from London, where he’s currently shooting Star Wars Episode VII. Shatner said Abrams told him, “I’m calling because the director of Star Trek, the next movie, has had an idea where you might be involved, so I’m calling to find out whether you would be interested.”

Shatner said he told Abrams, “It depends on what you do with the character, but I would be delighted.”

Shatner said that Abrams warned him that he couldn’t say anything to anybody, and Shatner agreed not to even tell his wife.

However, when Shatner got back from Australia, he said, “It’s all over the Internet that the director had held an interview and said they want Shatner and Nimoy to be in the next movie. I’ll bet you J.J.’s frothing at the mouth at this point. So the news is out that they have an idea that they want Leonard and myself…they might want Leonard and myself in it. But I would love to do it. But how do you get me fifty years later into the movie? I mean how do you rationalize it. I know it’s science fiction, but even I couldn’t come up with an idea. So that’s the news on that.”