It’s no secret that at one point, Paramount and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot worked with Quentin Tarantino on a script for a new “Star Trek” film. The film was said to be something very reminiscent of classic episodes of the original series and would perhaps be a full-on R-rated feature, as is the case with other Tarantino films. At the time, screenwriter Mark L. Smith was brought on to help Tarantino bring his vision to life. And according to Smith, the filmmaker’s vision was pretty spectacular.
READ MORE: ‘WandaVision’ Director Matt Shakman To Helm New ‘Star Trek’ Film
Speaking on the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast (via TotalFilm), Mark L. Smith talked about his experience working with Tarantino and the folks at the studio to help write the script for a new “Star Trek” feature. This is the first time we’ve really heard definitive word about the style and content of the film, and if what Smith says is accurate (and he wrote the damn thing, so you would expect it is), then “Star Trek” fans might be desperate to see the final film come to fruition. Though, that does seem highly unlikely.
“They just called me and said, ‘Hey, are you up for it? Do you want to go? Quentin wants to hook up.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And that was the first day I met Quentin, in the room and he’s reading a scene that he wrote and it was this awesome cool gangster scene, and he’s acting it out and back and forth,” explained Smith. “I told him, I was so mad I didn’t record it on my phone. It would be so valuable. It was amazing.”
He added, “Then just we started working. I would go hang out at his house one night and we would watch old gangster films. We were there for hours… We were just kicking back watching gangster films, laughing at the bad dialogue, but talking about how it would bleed into what we wanted to do. Kirk’s in it, we’ve got him. All the characters are there. It would be those guys. I guess you would look at it like all the episodes of the show didn’t really connect. So this would be almost its own episode. A very cool episode. There’s a little time travel stuff going on. There’s all this other… it’s really wild.”
Time travel? Gangsters? Kirk and the rest of the ‘Trek’ favorites? While it sounds completely different than the three “Star Trek” films that were part of the reboot universe that began in 2009, this unproduced feature does seem like something that could reinvigorate the franchise and perhaps usher in a new style of ‘Trek’ film. Though, as we said earlier, it does appear that the odds of this film actually happening seems to be nonexistent at this point.
Since the Tarantino “Star Trek” seemingly fell apart in development, Paramount has been trying to get a new film in the franchise off the ground. The latest news has “WandaVision” filmmaker Matt Shakman on board to direct a new film. Though, it’s unclear if the new film will continue the story of the previous three or be some sort of soft reboot. Regardless, it’s likely whatever Shakman is cooking up, it won’t be nearly as strange as what Tarantino and Smith were working on.