At one point, it was widely reported Quentin Tarantino was going to helm a film in the Star Trek franchise, surprising longtime fans of the auteur. After all, the director has long said he’s going to retire from filmmaking once he makes 10 movies, a sum he’ll reach with the release of his next picture. Because of that, Tarantino says, his Star Trek movie is never going to happen.
“It’s never going to happen. There’s been so much misinformation about what it was going to be—nothing but misinformation. I live in a special zone and part of my zone is because I’m not on Instagram and Facebook, I’m not creating this constant dialogue with the world with what’s going on with my life,” Tarantino explained on the latest episode of Bill Maher’s podcast. “Consequently, if you’re Joe Schlomoka and you’re some transient reporter of some kind, if you hear Quentin is going to make a Star Trek movie or a make a movie called The Movie Critic, or any f–king thing, it’s a little bit like that guy who wrote the Howard Hughes biography that ended up being a hoax. The thing is, they can say anything. My point being though, they write it in a show biz magazine and then that gets picked up in 140 pieces because I’m not shutting that down because I’m not connected.”
Interestingly enough, screenwriter Mark L. Smith has said he penned a script based on a story idea by Tarantino, suggesting he was, at least at one point, attached to a Star Trek project.
“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,” Smith told Collider last year. “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.”
Smith continued, “I know he said a lot of nice things about it. I would love for it to happen. It’s just one of those things 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.”
