For the Love of Spock Honors Original West Ender Leonard Nimoy

One of the West End’s favorite sons, Leonard Nimoy, is being celebrated once again in a new film.

For the Love of Spock premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April to critical and fan acclaim. According to the film’s website, the documentary “celebrates the upcoming 50th Anniversary of Star Trek through a personal, intimate look at the life and career of Leonard Nimoy, and his alter-ego, Mr. Spock, as told by his son, Adam Nimoy.”

For more than 45 years in television and film, Leonard played Mr. Spock, the renowned starship Enterprise’s first officer and science officer of human-Vulcan descent. For the Love of Spock features never-before-seen home video and family photos and interviews with Zachary Quinto—who plays Spock in the new film series—along with TV series originals William Shatner and George Takei as well as J.J. Abrams, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Jim Parsons and others.

On June 2nd, the announcement circulated that For the Love of Spock will get a worldwide release with Gravitas Ventures. The film will hit U.S. theaters and VOD on September 9, one day after the 50th anniversary of the original TV series. Paramount Pictures, owners of the Star Trek franchise and partial backers of the documentary, is holding a number of events commemorating the anniversary. At a fan event on May 21st, the studio enlisted Zachary Quinto to reveal and dedicate a street on its Hollywood lot as Leonard Nimoy Way in honor of the beloved actor.

Leonard grew up in Boston’s West End and never forgot his childhood community and how it influenced his life. He revisited the area many times as an adult and—in the last year of his life—starred in another of Adam’s documentaries, Leonard Nimoy’s Boston, which featured the neighborhood and the West End Museum. Leonard said his experiences in public speaking at the West End House and in the theater program at the Elizabeth Peabody House “…set me on a path, which became my life’s work.”

You can read more about the film in this Hollywood Reporter review, and keep up with developments on Facebook. Leonard died on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83, but clearly, the legend of the man, the actor, and the original West Ender is here to stay. Live long and prosper, indeed.