Quentin Tarantino: Why He Never Made a “Star Trek” Movie – Even Though It Was His Dream

Quentin Tarantino’s Decision Not to End his Career with a Star Trek Film

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith had plans to collaborate with Quentin Tarantino to bring to life a very special film project which would fulfill a long-held dream of the legendary director. In an interview with “Collider,” Smith referred to the project as the “greatest ‘Star Trek’ movie” of all time. Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. The screenwriter provided insight into Tarantino’s vision and revealed the reasons why the project was shelved.

Why Quentin Tarantino Withdrew from the Star Trek Project

In 2017, it was announced that Paramount and J.J. Abrams had accepted Quentin Tarantino’s proposal for a new “Star Trek” film. Mark L. Smith, known for his work on “The Revenant,” was tasked with scripting the film. However, the project encountered obstacles related to Tarantino’s self-imposed limit of directing only ten films.

According to Smith, the director withdrew from the passion project considering the possibility that “Star Trek” could be his potential final film. During the initial discussions, he questioned whether he wanted to conclude his filmmaking career with it. This internal conflict resulted in the script remaining on Tarantino’s desk, according to Smith. Tarantino, who plans to retire after his tenth film, eventually decided that his last project would be “The Movie Critic” instead of the “Star Trek” film.

Smith also revealed in the conversation that the “Star Trek” film would have featured extreme scenes and “Pulp Fiction”-like violence due to Tarantino’s bold and edgy vision, making it truly unique. The characters in Smith’s script were described as “extraordinarily radical,” which would have helped realize Tarantino’s dream of a distinctive contribution to the “Star Trek” saga. The plot of the unreleased film is set in a 1930s gangster milieu reminiscent of the “Starship Enterprise” episode “A Piece of the Action.
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