We’re only about a month away from the release of Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, and Quentin Tarantino has hit the press junkets to dish on everything from his favorite Marvel movie to his interest in directing a Star Trek film.
While the long-running sci-fi franchise is continuing to prosper on the small screen, its future in theaters has been left up in the air, set back by wage disputes and lackluster scripts. Though it seems like J.J. Abrams’ pitch for a fourth film in the Star Trek reboot series, set to star Chris Hemsworth alongside Chris Pine and crew, is in dire straights, Tarantino’s pitch is still alive at Paramount.
In an interview in this month’s Empire magazine, the man behind Pulp Fiction gave an update on the project:
“There’s a script that exists for it now, I need to weigh in on it, but haven’t been able to do that yet… It’s an R-rated movie. If I do it, it’ll be R-rated.”
The last we had heard, the director had pitched his Star Trek idea to Paramount in late 2017, having outsourced script-writing duties to The Revenant’s Mark L. Smith. Then came Pine’s very public drop out of Star Trek 4 and everyone kind of just assumed that Tarantino’s movie, which was already considered somewhat of a long shot of getting produced, was dead in the water. Now, these comments assure us that’s not the case.
Considering Pine had dropped out of the former for budgetary reasons, one wonders if Tarantino’s film would be another reboot with an entirely new cast, or if the actor is willing to return for a lower salary to work with the Oscar-winning writer/director. An R-rated take on a family friendly action blockbuster may seem like a risk to some, but with Quentin Tarantino comes name recognition that may actually benefit the Star Trek franchise’s often paltry box office intake.
Until we see the posters on the walls and a trailer playing in every theater though, I’m going to have a hard time believing that Tarantino will ever get his Star Trek off the ground. After all, now it looks like his next project is going to be a Django sequel/Zorro crossover, and it sounds like he might not even be done with Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, despite its upcoming release date. One thing’s for certain though, no matter what he does next, it will surely shock us all.
