While the next “Star Trek” film is possibly years away from shooting, the franchise has still been very much part of the news cycle of late. Quentin Tarantino‘s obviously pitched an idea—which he’s not actually writing—but it was recently revealed by Zachary Quinto that there are at least two other scripts in development too.
READ MORE: Zachary Quinto Gives You The Truth About Tarantino’s ‘Star Trek’ Involvement
Simon Pegg‘s been talking about “Star Trek” a lot too lately, admitting that he didn’t love the marketing surrounding the “Star Trek: Beyond” movie he co-wrote. On the recent Happy Sad Confused podcast, Pegg was asked about “Star Trek” and his critical thoughts of the franchise and he explained his frustrations a little bit more in depth.
“I’ve gotten into… it’s not hot water at all, but it’s gotten picked up a lot because I’d mentioned that I wasn’t happy with the way the film was marketed,” he said. Pegg went on to suggest Paramount didn’t rally hard enough around the relevant peg of the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek” which occurred the same year ‘Beyond’ came out.
READ MORE: Simon Pegg Talks Quentin Tarantino And ‘Poorly Marketed’ ‘Star Trek Beyond’
“It was a big year for ‘Star Trek’ and it felt like that was not ever embraced,” he explained of the studios marketing plan. “I think sometimes people get scared of the ‘Star Trek’ fanbase as being a kind of closed shop and if we were to mention ‘Star Trek’ in some way it would somehow turn all the other people who hadn’t seen ‘Star Trek’ off. I dunno, it just felt like an odd thing to do. I think the person responsible for that [campaign] is not there anymore.”
As for all Tarantino’s involvement, which the cast has been downplaying of late, or at least cautioning fans that they don’t know what will happen, Pegg poured a little bit more cold water on his mooted participation.
“I don’t think Quentin is going to direct it,” he admitted. “Because he’s got in his California movie [‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’] to do and then I think only doing one more film after that. And I doubt, I don’t think he could get around to directing a Star Trek in two-three years.”
Frankly, that’s not a huge surprise. Mark L. Smith, who penned “The Revenant,” is writing the script, not Tarantino and more and more it sounds like even the film idea itself is a maybe.
What’s Tarantino’s idea? He’s not sure but says, “I have a vague memory of him talking about it years and years ago back in the day. I sure he mentioned that. I’m sure it’s an idea he’s held on to for some time.”
Whatever the case may be, Pegg says a Tarantino “Star Trek” film wouldn’t just be f-bombs flying everywhere. “He’s a big fan and I think he would approach it with the respect,” he said reminding listeners that QT is such a big “Star Trek” fan he began “Kill Bill” with a Klingon proverb.
Fans should note, Zachary Quinto recently said that Pegg and Doug June, who wrote “Star Trek Beyond” are writing one of the three versions of whatever “Star Trek 4” turns out to be, but the actor who plays Scotty said that’s untrue, he’s not writing a new script, but he would love to write another “Star Trek” movie in the future. So chalk it back down to two scripts in development (one of them from Patrick McKay and John D. Payne who wrote the original aborted “Star Trek 3” script with Roberto Orci before he left the project and Justin Lin took over as director).
Perhaps that’s down to the fact that Pegg said making ‘Beyond’ was extremely “stressful” because of the tight timelines to get the movie made.
“Making it was more stressful,” he confessed of the race to get the screenplay ready on time. “There was a script we were all waiting to read and suddenly they went, ‘We’re not going with that script’… [Paramount] wanted to start from absolute scratch. We had six months to write ‘Star Trek Beyond.’ There were knocking on that door asking ‘what are we designing, what are we building?’ with three months out from shooting.”
Whatever happens one imagines the earliest we’ll see a new “Star Trek” movie is in 2019 and perhaps more likely 2020. Listen to the whole podcast below.