For a while now, Quentin Tarantino has made it clear that “Star Trek” was a major property that the director, who to date has only directed his own scripts, would be interested in tackling. We always figured it was one of those pie-in-the-sky ideas, something that was cool to talk about, but that would never happen, because no studio would cede control of a major brand to a filmmaker who would demand complete creative freedom. Well, we might be wrong.
Believe it or not, Tarantino is developing a “Star Trek” movie at Paramount. Seriously. The filmmaker apparently pitched an idea to J.J. Abrams, who in turn is assembling a writers room to try and put together a script for Tarantino’s take. If it goes well from there, Tarantino will consider directing it, with Abrams producing.
Obviously, there are no story details and it’s worth emphasizing this could never happen. That said, it was only a couple of months ago that Tarantino was spitballing the idea of expanding one of the classic “Star Trek” episodes into a feature length format.
“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 in September. “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.”
From Paramount’s end, they’re likely to happy that an auteur of Tarantino’s stature is interested in a property that, at least on the movie front, is fairly dead in the water. While there were plans to follow 2016’s “Star Trek: Beyond” with a sequel that would return Chris Hemsworth to the series, the film’s poor box office seemed to scotch that idea pretty quickly. Nothing has been on that front since.
Again, it’s worth stressing this “Star Trek” project could boldly go nowhere, and even if it does get moving, it’s still a while. Tarantino is busy prepping his Manson-era project for a scheduled 2019 release, while Abrams has a little film called “Star Wars: Episode IX” also the same year.
Nonetheless, this is pretty monumental. We’re gonna need to sit down and recover with some tea, Earl Grey, hot. [Deadline]