Star Trek’s Best Film Project Officially Dead
Quentin Tarantino is known for modern masterpieces like Pulp Fiction, and as anyone who remembers the Klingon proverb in Kill Bill knows, the man is a big fan of Star Trek. That’s why it was particularly exciting a few years ago to learn that the veteran director was working on a movie set in the Kelvinverse series of reboot films.
The director’s sudden decision to stop working on The Movie Critic spurred hopes that we might yet see his Star Trek film, but Tarantino confirmed in a podcast interview with Bill Maher that this project is “never going to happen.”
No Tarantino Trek Movie
Regarding his abandoned Star Trek project, the typically blunt Tarantino didn’t mince his words. He griped how “There’s been so much misinformation about what it was going to be—nothing but misinformation.” He also acknowledged that some of the misinformation likely spread because of his own reclusive nature: “I live in a special zone and part of my zone is because I’m not on Instagram and Facebook, I’m not creating this constant dialogue with the world with what’s going on with my life.”
Based On A Classic Episode
The directing icon specifically pointed out that much of what we knew (or thought we knew) about his Star Trek film is due to the spread of misinformation, making us wonder what Tarantino’s adventure with Captain Kirk and the crew would have been like.
Much of our knowledge comes from Tarantino’s former collaborator Mark L. Smith, who claimed that this movie would have been much like The Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action,” complete with a 1930s-style planet full of gangsters. A gushing Smith described a movie that was a “hard R” with “some Pulp Fiction violence,” all held together by “edginess” and “Tarantino flair.”
Tarantino Is Making One Final Film
Of course, plans for this Star Trek project were scrapped long ago, so why did fans have their hopes up that we might still see Tarantino’s film? According to Smith (who may or may not be a source of the “misinformation” Tarantino mentioned), the director ultimately got cold feet because he was interested in directing only one more project and wasn’t sure if he wanted his final legacy to be a Star Trek film.
That final film was going to be The Movie Critic, but once Tarantino decided to ditch that movie, some sci-fi fans hoped against hope that he might return to the abandoned Trek project.
A Return To The Kelvinverse
While we won’t be getting a Star Trek film from Quentin Tarantino (which, honestly, is a real shame), that doesn’t mean we won’t necessarily get another film set in the rebooted Kelvinverse.
Despite Paramount actively working on a separate Star Trek origin film, a fourth movie starring Chris Pine and the rest of his crew is still nominally in development. The script is being written by Steve Yockey (best known for Supernatural and Doom Patrol), but the question of whether this movie will ever see the light of day, especially given the chaotic state of Paramount, is one we can’t help but ask.
A Missed Opportunity
Given the general uncertainty of Star Trek as a whole, it’s somewhat relieving to hear that Tarantino’s project is dead once and for all. Sure, we’d set our phasers to “kill” for a chance of seeing Captain Kirk in a Pulp Fiction-style movie, but it’s good that the director definitively killed these rumors instead of letting our hopes fester. In return, maybe the fandom can get him a nice gift…may we suggest a wallet that says Bad Mothertrekker on it?
