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The expansive Kill Bill saga begins with white text against a black screen that reads “Revenge is a dish best served cold – Old Klingon Proverb” In one sentence, the Kill Bill saga defines its vengeance-driven focus, but it also establishes that writer/director Quentin Tarantino is a dyed in the wool Trekkie. Granted, nobody should be shocked that a man who wrote a Silver Surfer screenplay in the 1990s would also be devoted to Star Trek, but Kill Bill provided definitive proof to those still in doubt. For a brief period in the 2010s, Tarantino got to live out the fantasy of every Star Trek fan by taking the reins on a new Star Trek movie.
In December 2017, the news broke that Tarantino himself had approached Paramount Pictures with a very distinctive idea for a Star Trek movie. Understandably, the studio responded enthusiastically to the concept of a Tarantino Star Trek film and Mark L. Smith was hired to pen the screenplay for the film. At any point after Pulp Fiction dropped into movie theaters, the concept of Tarantino doing Star Trek would’ve been catnip for Paramount. However, the concept was extra enticing to this studio at this moment because, just a month earlier, Paramount, along with several other studios, had been beaten out by Sony/Columbia to the rights for the next Tarantino feature, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.
The significance of the property to the studio was further underscored by then-Paramount Pictures head Jim Gianopulos in a New York Times profile in January 2019. This prolific figure used the notion of a Tarantino Star Trek film as an example of the kind of distinctive auteur-driven projects that Paramount wanted to make a priority in the future. Being the home of a potential future production helmed by one of the most acclaimed American directors of modern Hollywood was also a great way to ensure that Paramount, despite its constant box office woes in the 2010s, still looked like a viable movie studio to the broader film industry.
Despite having so much importance to Paramount Pictures, there was minimal movement on Tarantino’s Star Trek project immediately after its announcement. This was to be expected given that his next directorial effort was always meant to be Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, with this period piece taking up all of the man’s focus for the foreseeable future. Tarantino confirmed as much in April 2019, when he noted that, once he was finished with Rick Dalton and company, he would be reconvening with Paramount Pictures about the possibility of directing something involving the Star Trek universe. Two months later, Tarantino confirmed that his Star Trek film, like all of his directorial efforts, would be rated R, a far cry from the earliest installments of this saga that had garnered PG ratings.
The underlying importance of a project that Tarantino wouldn’t be able to commit to for a while was underscored just a few months before these remarks when a proposed Star Trek Beyond sequel helmed by S.J. Clarkson collapsed. While just a year earlier Star Trek actors like Zachary Quinto were talking openly about how there were so many screenplays for new Star Trek movies buzzing around, options for the future of this franchise suddenly got much more limited. For a moment, before Noah Hawley’s Star Trek movie was announced, it looked like Tarantino’s concept for an installment in this franchise was the only plan for forthcoming Star Trek adventures on the table.
Despite how much importance was riding on Tarantino’s Star Trek, both for this individual franchise and Paramount Pictures as a studio, there was always uncertainty hovering over the idea of this proposed project ever existing. It wasn’t that Tarantino’s love for Star Trek was in doubt or even that Paramount Pictures wouldn’t want to make the movie. Unfortunately, though, Tarantino had often brushed up against famous franchises and brand names but, for a multitude of reasons, never gotten to make installments in these sagas.
For instance, Tarantino once planned to make a film adaptation of the TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but it never got off the ground. There was also the time he was highly interested in working on a James Bond movie in the form of Casino Royale, while the filmmaker was even given the chance to helm a movie based on the DC Comics character Sgt. Rock for Warner Bros. Tarantino had always expressed enthusiasm for these concepts, but whether by his desires or outside forces, the director always ended up directing original works that were inspired by classic pieces of pop culture. This track record did not bode well for the prospect of audiences ever seeing a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek feature on the big screen.
In November 2019, the worst-case outcome finally came to pass when Tarantino told Consequence of Sound that he was looking to “steer away” from his proposed Star Trek movie. Though he wasn’t saying it was dead or that he’d officially never do it, the phrasing was not hopeful for any Trekkies wanting to see this project come to fruition. A few months later, Tarantino would put the nail in the coffin of this bizarre idea for a blockbuster by confirming that he wouldn’t be helming this feature, though he could imagine Mark L. Smith’s script getting helmed by another filmmaker. With that, Tarantino’s Star Trek joined Sgt. Rock and Silver Surfer as Tarantino movies that were never meant to be.
In August 2021, Smith spilled the beans on what this proposed Tarantino Star Trek movie would’ve looked like by revealing that it would’ve been fixated on time travel and been primarily inspired by gangster movies. In fact, Tarantino had planned out a whole sequence of gangster movie dialogue already when he first called up Smith about the possibility of him writing a script for the proposed project. He also reaffirmed that this motion picture would’ve starred Kirk and the original Enterprise gang, though there was no talk about if it would’ve involved the Kelvin timeline version of these characters.
The unmade Quentin Tarantino Star Trek film is a fascinating thing to ponder. On the one hand, Tarantino is so good at making original and unique characters emerge from the molds of vintage art that it feels like a relief he didn’t get saddled in a pre-established universe. It’s much more interesting to see him use recognizable movies and TV shows as a leaping off point for something new rather than be constrained to what’s already worked in the past. On the other hand, it’ll always be tempting to imagine what such a strange detour from the franchise’s norms could’ve looked like. Though this feature will always remain a possibility rather than a reality, Tarantino’s love for Star Trek will live on in other ways, like that opening text to Kill Bill.
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