The Star Trek franchise is once again thriving on the small-screen, with a variety of projects in various stages of development, but unfortunately, the same can't be said for the big-screen side of things. STAR TREK 4 looked to be ready to go, but Paramount wound up cancelling the project for the time being, leaving Quentin Tarantino's film as the big-screen franchise's last hope.
Mark L. Smith (THE REVENANT) was tasked with writing the script for the film over a year ago and Tarantino said that the project was still a "very big possibility" last month. While speaking with Empire, Tarantino dropped another very small tease about the project.
There’s a script that exists for it now, I need to weigh in on it, but haven’t been able to do that yet.
Once Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is released next month, I'd imagine that the writer/director will finally have time to put his two cents in and we'll have a much better idea if the STAR TREK project will actually be moving forward. Tarantino also confirmed that the project is shaping up to be an R-rated movie. "Oh yeah! It's an R-rated movie. If I do it, it'll be R-rated," said Tarantino.
In regards to that R-rating, Karl Urban, who plays Dr. McCoy, has previously assured fans that the more adult-rating doesn't mean that the script is suddenly full of vulgarity; instead, the actor said that it will allow Tarantino to more fully explore the horrors of space.
You shouldn’t worry that it is going to be full of obscenity and stuff. He wants an R-rating to really make those beats of consequence land. If it’s not PG, if someone gets sucked out into space, which we have all seen before, we might see them get disemboweled first…It allows some some breadth…gives him some leeway to do that. To me, that was always one of the things I loved about what DeForest Kelley did. He would actually capture the horror of space. That look in his eyes of sheer terror always struck me when I was a kid.
Urban has also said that what little he knows of the project is bananas. "Quentin Tarantino went in to [producer] J.J. [Abrams]’s offices and pitched him an idea for a Star Trek movie. I know a little bit about what that is, and it’s bananas," Urban said. "So, it would be really rad to get to make a film with him. That would be a dream come true, he is definitely an auteur. Whether you like his films or not, he is a good filmmaker. And he makes interesting stuff. So, to me, that is when you get the best results." It remains to be seen if Tarantino's vision of STAR TREK will actually see the light of day, but if Tarantino wants it to happen, I can't imagine that Paramount would pass up the opportunity.