Quentin Tarantino on Future of His ‘Star Trek’ Film: ‘I Might Be Steering Away From It’

Quentin Tarantino appears to be wavering on the idea of directing an R-rated version of Star Trek, Deadline reports. “I might be steering away from it, but we’ll see,” Tarantino said of the project. “I haven’t completely decided, or talked to anyone involved. Nothing is official.”

Back in December 2017, Deadline reported that Tarantino had enlisted the help of J.J. Abrams, director of Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), on a new film for the franchise as the project was still in its early stages of development. Later that month, new details emerged which reported that The Revenant scribe Mark L. Smith would be responsible for penning the film’s script. 

However, when Tarantino spoke with Empire just six months later, he was happy to report that after being “worked on by a group of writers,” there was a completed script that he would need to “weigh in on.” Somewhere between then and now, Tarantino’s commitment to this mysterious Star Trek feature has waned. 

In an interview with CinemaBlend earlier this year, Tarantino discussed whether he would abide by the rules of his self-imposed retirement plan, which stipulated that he would call it quits after his 10th movie.

“I guess I do have a loophole, [if] the idea was to throw a loophole into it,” he said. “Which would be [to go], ‘Uhhh, I guess Star Trek doesn’t count. I can do Star Trek … but naturally I would end on an original.’ But the idea of doing 10 isn’t to come up with a loophole. I actually think, if I was going to do Star Trek, I should commit to it. It’s my last movie. There should be nothing left handed about it. I don’t know if I’m going to do that, but that might happen.”

Tarantino has already exploited a loophole in his wavering directorial promise by determining that Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 weren’t two separate films, and instead, counted as one long project. Yes, we know, he originally intended to release both at once, blah, blah, blah. The most important takeaway from his comments is that he has never been fully committed to capping himself at doing 10 films.

Stay tuned to see if Tarantino decides to make that Star Trek film after all.