What’s old becomes new again. So, the story goes a little like this: in a 2015 podcast talk with Nerdist circa “The Hateful Eight” press, director Quentin Tarantino talked about many things as he’s wont to do. Topics broached were his love for “Speed Racer,” Marvel’s “Luke Cage” (he wanted to make a movie in the ‘90s) and “Star Trek,” a sci-fi property that the “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker said he preferred to “Star Wars.”
While he talked about the movies to small degree, it was the “Star Trek” TV shows that clearly made a mark on the director. In fact, he knew many of the episode names off by heart suggesting some of them could be expanded into a movie.
“Some of those episodes are fantastic, and the only thing that limited them was their ‘60s budget and 8-day shooting schedule. And even having said that, they did a magnificent job. You could take some of the great, classic ‘Star Trek’ episodes and just easily expand them to 90 minutes or more. And really do some amazing stuff,” Tarantino enthused. “The obvious one would be ‘City On The Edge Of Forever,’ that’s what everyone would go to, but there’s a reason why everyone would go to that. It’s one of the classic stories of all time, and one of the great time travel stories. However, in thinking about that concept even further though, I think one of the best ‘Star Trek’ episodes ever written was for ‘Next Generation’… ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise.’ I actually think that is one of the great, not only space story, but the way it dealt with the mythology. That actually could bear a two-hour treatment.”
Great, that’s two years ago and life goes on, presumably, it’s one of the many, “Hey, you know what would be cool?” ideas Tarantino has talked about publicly over the years, generally when asked (you can listen to the full podcast conversation here).
But the Internet is the Internet and suddenly, very recently, that same conversation of Tarantino talking “Star Trek” has been edited into a digestible bite and has gone viral. Will Tarantino make a “Star Trek” movie with only two films supposedly left in his career according to the director? Almost certainly not.
But thanks to TMZ the clip is circulating. The tabloid show caught Tarantino at the airport and asked him if he would be interested in making a “Star Trek” movie. “It would be worth having a meeting about,” he said, briefly also confirming the aforementioned statements that he plans to direct two more films before retiring (we’ll believe that when we see it, and he’s already said TV won’t count towards that number).
It all sounds very intriguing, albeit a little far-fetched given that shooting hasn’t even started yet on QT’s next movie, which will take on Charles Manson murders, and could star Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence and other A-List stars. It sounds cute, but Tarantino handling a “Star Trek” movie? Hardly. This is a helmer who has exclusively generated his own content aside from “Jackie Brown,” which he made his own regardless.
And Paramount suddenly giving their reins of a mega-franchise to a director that doesn’t make mega-franchise movies? Not going to happen. What would be MUCH more realistic is Tarantino directing and writing an episode of “Star Trek” TV. Hell, “Star Trek Discovery” debuts on CBS tonight, so the timing there would be perfect.
Still, with Tarantino supposedly winding his career down, you’d be foolish to believe the director would finish up his largely impeccable filmography with someone else’s intellectual property.