No, it’s not April Fools’ Day. Deadline is reporting that Quentin Tarantino—yes, that Quentin Tarantino—might direct a Star Trek movie.
Apparently Tarantino recently pitched an idea for a Trek movie to producer J.J. Abrams, who loved it, and they’ll soon begin to assembling a writer’s room to flesh it out. If everything falls into place, Tarantino could be interested in directing with Abrams producing.
This isn’t something that’ll be happening soon, though. Next up for the iconic director is his still-untitled 1969-set movie, which Sony Pictures just picked up. That already has a release date of August 9, 2019, so there’s no doubt that’s next for him. That leaves almost two years of time for a script to get written that could woo Tarantino into doing several things he’s never done before.
He’s never directed a feature he didn’t write. He’s never done a scifi film. He’s never done a major franchise film. If he does make this movie, it could potentially be his 10th movie, and he’s famously said he would retire after 10 movies. Would he really go out with a Star Trek movie? And there are probably 15 other things that make this news that surprising.
Deadline was unable to get comment from Paramount or Tarantino’s camp, and that’s to be expected. Something this huge, this early, isn’t regularly publicized. Plus, there’s also no word on how, if at all, this would change the proposed fourth Trek movie which was reportedly going to bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk.
But holy shit. Holy shit. Quentin Tarantino might direct a Star Trek movie. And even if he doesn’t actually direct the movie, we still may actually see a Star Trek movie from the mind of Quentin Tarantino.
[Deadline]
Update: Birth Movies Death uncovered this piece of audio from a 2015 Nerdist podcast Tarantino actually talks about some ideas for a Star Trek movie. Whether or not this includes any of what he pitched Abrams, we don’t know, but it’s possible. And hell, it’s Tarantino geeking out about Star Trek either way. We figured it was worth an update.