Tarantino's Star Trek (Will Be R-Rated: ‘Revenant' Scribe Frontrunner)

EXCLUSIVE: Already busy prepping to direct the film he just set up at Sony Pictures, Quentin Tarantino is also planning to boldly go where he has not gone before. Sources said that Tarantino has come up with a great idea for a Star Trek movie at Paramount. After sharing his idea with JJ Abrams (who himself is busy prepping Star Wars Episode IX), I’ve heard the plan is to assemble a writers room of scribes who’ll hear Tarantino’s take and begin to put together a movie. If it all works out, Tarantino might direct it, with Abrams producing.

While Tarantino has always come up with his own original films, many have wondered what he might do if he took the reins of an existing franchise. He has only done that on television, twice directing episodes of CSI and once an episode of ER. He has spoken about the appeal of taking on one of the James Bond movies, but the hard part of something like that is getting the rights holders to give him a wide creative swath that comes along with a final cut auteur like Tarantino. This would give a remarkable boost to the venerable franchise for Paramount, which is looking to build them under studio chief Jim Gianopulos.

As Deadline revealed last month, Tarantino agreed to make his next film for Sony Pictures. The untitled film is an ensemble that deals with a period in Los Angeles around the time of the Manson murder spree around 1969. He has asked Margot Robbie to play Sharon Tate, and has been discussing two great male lead roles with Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, though he hasn’t yet set final casting. Release date is August 9, 2019. That is the 50th anniversary of the death of Sharon Tate, but the description of the picture as a Manson Family pic isn’t really accurate, kind of like describing Inglorious Basterds as a movie about Hitler.

Paramount declined comment, and attempts to reach Tarantino’s camp were unavailing. Stay tuned.

Tyger wrote:But you can't say the N word in the Star Trek universe

After Deadline this week revealed that Quentin Tarantino pitched a Star Trek film to JJ Abrams and Paramount, the whole thing is moving at warp speed. Tarantino met for hours in a writers room with Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce. They kicked around ideas and one of them will get the job. I’m hearing the frontrunner is Smith, who wrote The Revenant. The film will most certainly go where no Star Trek has gone before: Tarantino has required it to be R rated, and Paramount and Abrams agreed to that condition. Most mega budget tent poles restrict the film to a PG-13 rating in an effort to maximize the audience. That was the reason that Guillermo Del Toro’s $150 million At The Mountains of Madness didn’t go forward at Universal, even though Tom Cruise was ready to star. The exception to this rule was Fox’s Deadpool, but that film started out with modest ambitions before it caught on and became the biggest R rated film ever.

That rating was crucially important to Tarantino, who hopes to direct this Star Trek and who has helmed R rated films his entire career. Imagine how this could open storytelling lanes, or even what the banter on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise might be, if you conjure up memories of the conversations between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, or the banter at the diner between robbers before the heist gone wrong that triggered the action in Reservoir Dogs.

Smith is best known for writing the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed The Revenant and subsequently overhauled Overlord, the WWII thriller that Abrams’ Bad Robot is producing for Paramount. Pearce’s script credits include Iron Man 3, Sherlock Holmes 3, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and the TV series Runaway TV; he just directed his script Hotel Artemis; Beer’s credits are mostly upcoming, and include the Doug Liman-directed Chaos Walking, as well as Godzilla Vs. Kong, Masters of the Universe, Barbarella and Dungeons and Dragons, all big scale stuff.

They will lock one of the three quickly (if there is a front runner, it might be Smith), and the film will be scripted based on Tarantino’s idea while Tarantino is filming his next film about the Manson summer of 1969, which got set at Sony and has I, Tonya‘s Margot Robbie poised to play Sharon Tate, and Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt all having met with the filmmaker about roles.