Nerd Alert! Check out the new Ghostbusters; Star Trek Beyond trailer

Welcome to Nerd Alert!, your weekly round-up of news from the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, animation, and all things nerdy.

COLUMBIA PICTURES HAS released a still featuring the cast of Paul Feig's forthcoming Ghostbusters reboot, showing Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Jones in their full ghost-busting gear. We've seen promotional images of the foursome before, but this is apparently an actual scene from the movie. Check it out above, and compare with the original cast below. Watch for the new Ghostbusters to hit theatres in July.

WHILE THE REST OF the world is losing its shit over a certain other movie with star in the title, it's worth remembering that there are still Star Trek fans out there. With that in mind, here's the first trailer for Star Trek Beyond. (It was shot in vancouver, but you'd never know it.) Unlike the first two films in the current Trek series, this one wasn't directed by J.J. Abrams (although he executive-produced). It was directed by The Fast and the Furious's Justin Lim. That fact, plus "Sabotage", plus explosions 'n' motorbikes, has Trekkers seeing red on the movie's IMDb message board. Sample comment: "That trailer was the lowest moment in Star Trek history." I guess we'll see how much lower things (like fan expectations) can sink when Star Trek Beyond comes out in July. In the meantime, behold:

OH, AND HERE'S the "announcement trailer" for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which returns to J.K. Rowling's wizardly world of wizarding wizards, albeit without Harry Potter or any of his pals. It does, however, feature some escaped magical creatures. It doesn't come out until November 2016! So don't get too excited yet.

ONE OF THE MOST acclaimed Canadian comics of the past decade, Jeff Lemire's Essex County, will soon be coming to TV—Canadian TV, fittingly. More recently Lemire has become well-known for his work on mainstream superhero titles, including DC's Green Arrow and Marvel's Extraordinary X-Men. (He also created the dystopian mutant tale Sweet Tooth, which is one of my personal favourites.) Before that, though, Lemire wrote and drew a series of stories set in Essex County, Ontario. These were collected in a single volume in 2011. That collection won numerous awards and was a Canada Reads selection that year.

Now, First Generation Films has optioned Essex County for TV treatment. Canadian TV veteran Aaron Martin (Being Erica, Degrassi: The Next Generation) is set to write the pilot script of the series, which is in development for CBC-TV. Can a Sweet Tooth series be far behind?

PLEASE NOTE THE tremendous willpower I showed by not including anything about Star Wars: The Force Awakens in this week's Nerd Alert! You're welcome. I did interview Anthony "C-3PO" Daniels this week, though, and you can read that here.