Acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s abandoned Star Trek movie would’ve had a gangster vibe to it. For several years beginning in 2017, fans of both Star Trek and Tarantino thought they’d hit the jackpot. The notoriously violent and creative writer/director had made it clear that he was strongly considering making a Star Trek film. With his huge range of TV and film knowledge, as well as being a big fan of the original series, Tarantino seemed like the ideal candidate to do something new and exciting with the decades old film franchise.
Had the film happened, it would have been one of the few times in Tarantino’s career in which he shared a writing credit. The 58-year-old had pitched his vision of the sort of Star Trek film that he had in mind, and Paramount had brought in Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) to work with Tarantino on coming up with a script. Unfortunately, by 2019, Tarantino was busy with the release of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and still insisting that he would only direct one more film before retiring from filmmaking. After Once Upon A Time took home rave reviews and two Oscars, Tarantino’s grasp on a possible Star Trek film seemed more tenuous than ever, with the general feeling among fans being that he’d lost interest in the idea.
Though he’s still reportedly on board Paramount’s next Star Trek film as a producer, it doesn’t look as though a Tarantino entry in the franchise will happen any time soon – if ever. But as Trek Movie reports, Tarantino’s idea for the film was intriguing, to say the least. While explaining the situation to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast, Smith expanded on how Tarantino’s vision involved a classic 1930s gangster vibe, as well as time travel. Read what Smith said below:
It was through J.J. Abrams, through Bad Robot. I’ve done a few things with them. And so they always bring me stuff… But Tarantino, he wanted to do this. And so we all gathered in a room and we talked about the ways in. After that, they just called me and said, “Hey, are you up for it? Do you want to go? Quentin wants to hook up.” And I said, “Yeah.” And that was the first day I met Quentin, in the room and he’s reading a scene that he wrote and it was this awesome cool gangster scene, and he’s acting it out and back and forth. I told him, I was so mad I didn’t record it on my phone. It would be so valuable. It was amazing. Then just we started working. I would go hang out at his house one night and we would watch old gangster films. We were there for hours… We were just kicking back watching gangster films, laughing at the bad dialogue, but talking about how it would bleed into what we wanted to do. Kirk’s in it, we’ve got him. All the characters are there. It would be those guys. I guess you would look at it like all the episodes of the show didn’t really connect. So this would be almost its own episode. A very cool episode. There’s a little time travel stuff going on. There’s all this other… it’s really wild.
Word had previously spread that Tarantino’s Star Trek concept was based on an episode from the second season of the original Star Trek TV series called "A Piece of the Action." The majority of that episode is earthbound, with the action taking place on a planet that is steeped in the 1930s American gangster aesthetic. But, apparently, much more was taking place in Tarantino’s film than just gangsterism, and fans will likely be disappointed that such a film never happened.
Of course, no one ever knows if a film is dead or not – especially in Hollywood. However, the fact that Tarantino’s last film is something that he’s not in any rush to deliver is a strong indication that he’s going to take some time to let his creative juices flow. In that sense, there doesn’t seem to be any room for a Star Trek film, especially since it can never be uniquely his own.
Source: Trek Movie