On Monday, we reported that Quentin Tarantino had decided he wanted to make a Star Trek movie, developing a pitch with J.J. Abrams that he had then sold to Paramount. The studio thought his pitch was a “great idea” and quickly began looking for writers who could flesh out his concept into an actual movie idea, all with the ultimate goal being for Tarantino to hopefully direct the film himself.
We still don’t know anything about the plot of Tarantino’s pitch, but apparently Paramount is so excited about it that it’s really moving forward rather quickly. According to Deadline, Tarantino met for “hours” with the group of writers that Paramount had assembled—including Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce—with them all workshopping ideas as an audition of sorts to see who will get the screenwriting job. Deadline says that Revenant writer Smith is the frontrunner, and if Tarantino does end up directing, that will make this one of only a handful of projects he has ever directed that he didn’t also write.
Meanwhile, Paramount has also reportedly agreed to make the movie R-rated, which was apparently an important part of the deal for Tarantino. We joked in our original story that this movie could have more uses of the word “motherfucker” than the average Star Trek movie, but now it’s starting to look like that will really be possible.