Quentin Tarantino’s Still Talking About Doing An R-Rated STAR TREK Movie

We're beginning to think he might be serious.

Been a while since we heard anything on Quentin Tarantino's long-gestating Star Trek project, but today brings a very small, borderline not-even-worth-reporting update. But it's a slow news day, and the few vague (and decidedly non-committal) things Tarantino does have to say about the film are somewhat encouraging, so we're gonna hear him out.

But first, a recap of events thus far: all the way back in December of 2017, we learned that Quentin Tarantino and JJ Abrams were working on a Star Trek movie together. This was great, exciting news, and was quickly followed by another update - Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek would be rated R. Two weeks later, we learned definitively that Tarantino would not be writing the script for this movie, just directing it. What followed were a flurry of minor news stories wherein various members of Star Trek casts old and new weighed in on the matter. Some of them expressed disbelief that the project might actually happen; some of them expressed interest in appearing in the film if it did. The whole thing's been a real roller coaster, and the end result was us deciding that the whole thing was probably just never gonna happen. After all, if something sounds too good to be true...

Which brings us to today. In a new interview with Empire Magazine (and as quoted by the folks over at TrekMovie.com), Tarantino says his Star Trek project is still very much in the works - he just hasn't had the time to weigh in on the screenplay yet:


Pressed as to whether or not the movie really would be rated R, Tarantino says:

“Oh yeah! It’s an R-rated movie. If I do it, it’ll be R-rated.”

So, on the one hand, this definitely isn't new information. This is just Tarantino reiterating things we already knew or suspected. But it does suggest that progress has been made (The Revenant's Mark L. Smith has completed a screenplay) and that Tarantino's still interested in taking on the project, should that screenplay meets his requirements. Given the rate at which Tarantino falls in and out of love with different projects, that's probably worth noting. 

All of that said, we're still having trouble imagining Tarantino directing a screenplay he didn't write himself. Stranger things have happened, though, and if Tarantino really is building up to a self-imposed retirement at some point in the next decade, we can easily imagine him taking a weird swing like this (perhaps directing a Star Trek movie he didn't write means the film won't "count" towards the 10 films Tarantino wants to go out on?). Guess we'll just have to wait and see. 

Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops. We're probably gonna be talking about it for another two years.

(Note: Header art by Ken Taylor, for Mondo)