Posted in: Movies, Opinion, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, streaming, TV, TV | Tagged: paramount, quentin tarantino, star trek, Star Trek 4, star trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Would Fit Quentin Tarantino Perfectly

Writer Mark Smith on Quentin Tarantino backing out of directing Star Trek 4 - and why we think he should direct a Strange New Worlds episode.

As a pop culture sponge, Quentin Tarantino built his entire career out of sharing his love of TV and cinema with audiences through his projects, the bulk of his directing and writing career in films. The few TV shows he worked on include NBC's ER and CBS's CSI, which makes the lingering rumors of his involvement in Star Trek perplexing. The two-time Oscar winner was teased as the director of the fourth Kelvin universe timeline film from Paramount for an R-rated sequel to the films starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and John Cho, even going as far as pitching it to executives before plans fell through. The screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Boys in the Boat) shared details on what the project was going to be about and why Tarantino ultimately backed out.

"So Quentin came in to Bad Robot, we met there, and he had this pitch, this idea of a version of Star Trek that he wanted to make," Smith told Collider adding he was mesmerized by Tarantino's pitch, noting that he wishes he'd "snuck something in to record as he's doing his dialogue, and his acting it out is just so wonderful." The director insisted "a writer to do it, which wasn't normal for him. So, we kind of clicked and so they asked me to do it, he and J.J. [Abrams], so I wrote a draft."

Smith said the script had Pulp Fiction-level violence aiming for the "Hard R." "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," he said. "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."

One of the major projects in the current era of filmmaking several Star Trek figures noted in the past, from William Shatner to Pegg, is the financial ceiling for the franchise tends to be lower compared to the much-bigger budget contemporaries in superheroes and other IPs. The revolving directors also didn't help with those like Noah Hawley and Matt Shakman also once attached to Star Trek 4 before they moved on.

What's perplexing is that Paramount+ has two active shows in production with the live-action Strange New Worlds and the animated Lower Decks, not to mention the Starfleet Academy in development and the (hopefully) potential Picard sequel series Legacy (or another follow-up) waiting to be greenlit. If medical dramas and procedures are in Tarantino's wheelhouse, why couldn't he just take the plunge and direct TV again for Star Trek? The self-enclosed nature of a show like Strange New Worlds could allow Tarantino to have that space he always wanted without affecting everything else. And don't get me started on what Tarantino & Michelle Yeoh could pull off together with something Section 31-related. For more, you can check out the interview with Smith here.

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