Star Trek Beyond may have performed well with critics, but the film didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. And while a fourth film in the J.J. Abrams reboot-verse is still on the way, there’s a good chance it will be considerably different than what’s come before it. Enter Quentin Tarantino.
Believe it or not, the cult favorite director — who has never done anything even resembling a franchise film — is in talks to direct the next Star Trek movie. According to Deadline, the Pulp Fiction director has a great idea for a Star Trek film that he’s pitched to series overlord Abrams. Abrams then took the idea to Paramount, and the studio is now apparently putting together a writer’s room to bang out a script. After that’s taken care of, the tentative plan is for Tarantino to direct the film while Abrams produces.
We don’t know yet what sort of idea the director has for the next Star Trek film that managed to excite Abrams and Paramount, but in a 2015 interview with the Nerdist Podcast — dug up by Birth.Movies.Death — he expressed his desire to make a Star Trek movie based on an old episode from the series. Specifically, he mentioned The Original Series‘ “City on the Edge of Forever,” and more enthusiastically, The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” which deals with time travel and alternate timelines. Fun fun.
The fourth Star Trek movie does not yet have a release date, but all of the major cast members are signed on to return — as is Chris Hemsworth, who briefly portrayed Captain Kirk’s father in the first reboot film. His casting could end up tying into a story that revolves around time travel, but the only way we’ll know for sure if Tarantino is involved is if the new film features lots of blood, cursing, and Samuel L. Jackson.
