We may never know if a Quentin Tarantino-led Star Trek film would boldly go where none had gone before, but Simon Pegg has an idea.
Pegg — who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in all three films of the Star Trek reboot series: Star Trek (2009), Into Darkness (2013), and Beyond (2016) — didn’t read the script for the proposed film, but heard a detailed description of it from producers Lindsey Weber and J.J. Abrams, he told Collider during a panel at the Fan Expo Boston over the weekend.
“That was what we call in the business bats— crazy,” he said of his reaction to Tarantino’s vision. “It was everything you would expect a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek script to be.”
He didn’t provide further details on the specific plot points given to him, but did tease, “I think it would have been such an incredible sort of curio to see Star Trek through his lens. I don’t know how it would have gone over with the fans, but it certainly would have been an interesting thing.”
Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett; Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty
Sci-fi fans first had their faces set to stunned in December 2017 when news broke that the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood helmer had come up with an idea for an R-rated Star Trek film, and that he also hoped to direct it. At the time, reports stated that screenwriters Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Lindsey Beer (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines), and Drew Pearce (Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation) were in the running to pen the script, with Smith as the apparent frontrunner. The plan was for Tarantino to direct.
Smith later revealed that the idea would involve Captain Kirk and time travel and draw inspiration from classic gangster films. As of summer 2019, Tarantino told Empire that he still hoped to make the film, and that a script had been written, but he needed to weigh in on it. In 2020, Tarantino told Deadline that he believes “they might make that movie,” but he would no longer direct it. The project has thus far failed to materialize.
Simon Pegg as Scotty in ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’.
Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett
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Though there are no positive updates about a possible Tarantino venture into the Star Trek cinematic landscape, Pegg did share at Fan Expo Boston that he has some reason to be optimistic that his corner of the Trek-verse might live long and prosper.
The actor noted that Skydance founder David Ellison, who executive produced Beyond and Into Darkness, is now chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance Corporation following the merger.
“I’m hoping, now that David Ellison is now high up at Paramount,” Pegg said, “now the merger’s happened, and David’s always been a big supporter of the Kelvin timeline…maybe we’ll get to make another one.”
