Quentin Tarantino has suggested that the Star Trek movie he has planned to direct since 2017 may no longer happen.
Despite repeatedly teasing the project during promotion for his last film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the filmmaker has now said that he has started to distance himself from it.
“I think I’m steering away from Star Trek, but I haven’t had an official conversation with those guys yet,” he told Consequence of Sound.
He also revealed that he no longer feels pressure to make his 10th, and reportedly final, movie a seminal closer to his directorial career. Tarantino has always said he plans to make 10 films in total, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being his ninth.
“In a strange way, it seems like… Hollywood would be my last,” he explained. “So, I’ve kind of taken the pressure off myself to make that last big voilà kind of statement.
“I mean to such a degree there was a moment when I was writing and went, ‘Should I do this now? Should I do something else? Is this the 10th one?’ No, no don’t stop the planets from aligning, what are you, Galactus? If the Earth is saying do it, do it.”
He continued, “Not that it was an argument, but a little thought, like, ‘Well, if I’m gonna go out like Max Ophüls style, Lola Montez, this is it, and if it’s not good, then all my other work is trash, alright.’ This would have been the one. But in a weird way, it actually kind of freed me up. I mean, I have no idea what the story of the next one’s going to be. I don’t even have a clue.”
Tarantino successfully pitched an R-rated Star Trek movie to Paramount Pictures and producer JJ Abrams in 2017. He confirmed in July that a script had been written for the project by Mark L Smith, one that he described as “Pulp Fiction in space”.
If Tarantino’s Star Trek ever comes to fruition, it would be the filmmaker’s first franchise movie.
