Cue the Kill Bill sirens: Quentin Tarantino might be planning to put his distinctive stamp on the Star Trek franchise. Multiple outlets are reporting that Tarantino and J.J. Abrams are setting up a writers room for the next Star Trek film, with Deadline reporting that the script would be based on an idea by the Pulp Fiction director. If things move forward, Tarantino would direct with Abrams producing.
It’s still early to speculate, but lucky for us, Tarantino has actually discussed his vision for a potential Star Trek movie before. On an episode of Nerdist’s podcast two years ago, Tarantino explained that while he was a fan of Abrams’ Star Trek, he wasn’t as fond of Star Trek Into Darkness. He also said he thinks that there are episodes of The Original Series just waiting to be rebooted:
What I actually think could be cool—some of those episodes are fantastic and the only thing that limited them was their ‘60s budget and eight-day shooting schedule, and even having said that, they did a magnificent job. You could take some of the great classic Star Trek episodes and just easily expand them to 90 minutes or more and really do some amazing, amazing stuff. The obvious one would be “City on the Edge of Forever,” but there’s a reason everyone would go to that. It’s one of the classic stories of all time, and one of the great time-travel stories.
During the same interview, Tarantino also sung the praises of The Next Generation’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Granted, that and “City on the Edge of Forever” are two of the most beloved episodes of Star Trek of all time, but it’s interesting that Tarantino would drop the names of not one but two episodes about time travel.
It’s also telling that the director, who is known for writing his own stories, would contemplate a reboot rather than creating his own original plot. Then again, Star Trek Beyond, while critically well-received, didn’t do nearly as well as its two predecessors at the box office, so maybe 2015 Tarantino was onto something there.
