Quentin Tarantino Says He Doesn’t Think He’ll Direct Star Trek Anymore

I guess we won’t be hearing any Klingon slurs, after all. Despite all the hustle and/or bustle that was made when Quentin “Hard R” Tarantino announced a while ago that he was actively working on bringing a Star Trek film to life, most of the hubbub has died down over the last year, as the storied director moved to focus on Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood before tackling the space epic. Now, it seems that he won’t be sitting behind the camera, per the man himself.

The news originally broke in 2017 that Tarantino and Star Wars murderer J.J. Abrams were collaborating on continuing Star Trek‘s filmic journey. The duo enlisted The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith to write the script based off Quentin’s story idea, and the possibility of him directing it surfaced immediately.

However, now that Tarantino is all freed up, he seems to have lost interest in directing, wasn’t selected to, or something else happened entirely. Here’s what he said on the subject:

“I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it. It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut.”

Whelp, that’s not great, eh? I was actually interested to see just what kind of movie he’d make out of this property. Tarantino is usually wholly original (to a degree), only adapting someone else’s source material once when he made Jackie Brown back in the 90s. While I personally loved Star Trek Beyond, the franchise itself has seemingly become stale to audiences, so a weird auteuristic kick in the pants could have benefitted the series well.

Granted, Trekkies ain’t exactly suffering from a drought of content currently. They got Discovery and Picard on CBS All Access, there’s Noah Hawley’s kinda-recently announced film (which may or may not scrap the entire cast and re-re-re-reboot the whole dang thing), and a major glut of older, cherished pieces of media. My partner really wants to watch Sir Patrick galavant around the galaxy one last time, so maybe I’ll do that. Either way, the fact that I won’t learn what they call a quarter pounder with cheese on Romulus in the next Star Trek movie is going to be a major letdown.