Quentin Tarantino Scrapped 'Star Trek' Film Over Fear of It Being His Final Film
“It would be the greatest Star Trek film…just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it. It was just a balls-out kind of thing.”
For years, Quentin Tarantino has been contemplating what film to end his career on and it looks like he really did not want it to end on a Star Trek film.
The project was initially announced by Paramount in 2017. J.J. Abrams was said to be teaming up with the studio and screenwriter Mark L. Smith, however, the film was ultimately scrapped. In a recent interview with Collider, Smith shared the reasoning Tarantino had for later dropping out of the Star Trek project. He said that Tarantino just could not bring himself to end on the film, having being quite adamant about directing 10 films and then retiring. Smith explained when he wrote the script,
“It was a different thing, but this was such a particular different type of story that Quentin wanted to tell with it that it fit my kind of sensibilities. So I wrote that, Quentin and I went back and forth, he was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films.
“I remember we were talking, and he goes, ‘If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?’ And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk. I know he said a lot of nice things about it. I would love for it to happen. It’s just one of those that I can’t ever see happening. But it would be the greatest Star Trek film, not for my writing, but just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it. It was just a balls-out kind of thing.”
In terms of what Tarantino’s vision for the film would be, Smith did not give any spoilers but he did reveal that it would have been a “hard R.” He added, ” It was going to be some Pulp Fiction violence. Not a lot of the language, we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the Star Trek world, but it was just really the edginess and the kind of that Tarantino flair, man, that he was bringing to it. It would have been cool.”
While it is unlikely fans will get to see this version, they can only hope that it would one day surface.
