This evening, both Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter dropped reports that would cut through any diehard sports- or politics fan's timeline. High aesthetic, foul-mouth dialogue auteur Quentin Tarantino reportedly has an idea for a new Star Trek movie, and he's already approached Trek cinema careholder JJ Abrams. Both entertainment outlets confirm the two now plan on bringing a writers room together for Paramount to flesh things out.
Tarantino's resume speaks for itself, from Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction through Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. He's one of the most distinct modern filmmakers with an easy to recognize (and parody) style. The director has worked with other creators' IPs before (Jackie Brown comes from the great Elmore Leonard, for instance), but a Trek film would represent the first time he dabbled in an established major movie franchise. (Deadline notes he has dabbled in TV franchises like CSI and ER.)
Of course, an idea and a writers room promise does not guarantee a movie. Tarantino already has a Charles Manson-ish movie in progress for 2019, while Abrams recently agreed to come back to the Star Wars franchise with Episode IX. And Paramount already expressed a desire for a fourth Chris Pine-led Trek installment to follow up the ehhh that was last year's Star Trek Beyond. The studio did not respond to requests for comment from either Hollywood publication, so there's no clarity on whether Tarantino's interest would impact those plans.
But clearly, adding Tarantino's cache to the Trek franchise would be a major coup for Paramount. The director's films tend to not only perform commercially, his latest three films all took in multiple Oscar nominations and Tarantino won for the Django Unchained screenplay.
Trekkies everywhere can sit back and enjoy the speculation for now (not only in storyline, but whether Tarantino would follow-through and direct). But perhaps the director's 2015 Nerdist interview provides the most tea leaves for present day reading. At the 1:08:00 mark…
"I'm definitely a fan of the original series and definitely a fan of William Shatner," he said, before decrying the second film's use of Benedict Cumberbatch and later praising The Next Generation. "I actually think [a film] could be cool, because the old episodes are fantastic. The only thing that limited them was their 60s' budget and eight-day shooting schedule. You could take some of the great Star Trek episodes and easily expand them to 90 minutes or more and really do some amazing, amazing stuff. The obvious one would be 'City On The Edge of Forever.' That's what everyone would go do, but there's a reason everyone would go to that—it's one of the classic stories of all time, one of the great time travel stories."
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Ars Technica
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