The news that Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino was planning to direct a Star Trek movie received an overwhelmingly positive response from Trekkies. Star Trek 4 had completely stalled and his R-Rated take on the franchise had the potential to be unlike anything we'd seen before.
The project has since fallen apart, with Paramount Pictures instead focusing on a new prequel movie with Andor filmmaker Toby Haynes attached to direct from a screenplay by Dark Shadows writer Seth Grahame-Smith.
The studio reportedly intends to still make the "final chapter" of the Chris Pine-led era of Star Trek movies, with Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant) attached to write a new draft of that screenplay. As for Tarantino's scrapped plans, it all comes back to his desire to make 10, and only 10, movies as a filmmaker.
"It's never going to happen," he tells Bill Maher in the video below. "There's been so much misinformation about what it was going to be - nothing but misinformation. I live in a special zone and part of my zone is because I'm not on Instagram and Facebook, I'm not creating this constant dialogue with the world with what's going on with my life."
"Consequently, if you're Joe Schlomoka and you're some transient reporter of some kind, if you hear Quentin is going to make a Star Trek movie or a make a movie called The Movie Critic, or any f--king thing, it's a little bit like that guy who wrote the Howard Hughes biography that ended up being a hoax," Tarantino continued. "The thing is, they can say anything."
"My point being though, they write it in a show biz magazine and then that gets picked up in 140 pieces because I'm not shutting that down because I'm not connected."
Last year, screenwriter Mark L. Smith said he'd penned a script based on Tarantino's story ideas and confirmed the filmmaker "started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films."
He added, "I remember we were talking, and he goes, 'If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?' And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk."
We're still not sure why Tarantino is so attached to that number, but it means we're going to miss out on a few different projects he's been working on at one time or another in recent years. There's no indication that Paramount plans to continue developing Smith's screenplay minus Tarantino, unfortunately.
Stay tuned for more on Star Trek as we have it.