Quentin Tarantino Star Trek film still on deck at Paramount

In a recent interview, the head of Paramount’s film division indicated that the studio would love to see the Quentin Tarantino Star Trek project happen.

The last few years have not been very kind to Paramount Pictures, the home of Star Trek on the big screen. Years of incredibly bad decisions and inept leadership almost resulted in the studio closing up shop for good.

However, things are starting to look up once again for Paramount. They have new leadership in the form of CEO Jim Gianopulos and producer Wyck Godfrey, who has been put in charge of the studio’s film division.

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One of Godfrey’s first priorities has been to try to bring back to life some of Paramount’s most popular franchises, including the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Top Gun, The Terminator and of course, Star Trek.

Godfry has already had some success on the film front. The Bumblebee spinoff was a big enough hit that it might have singlehandedly saved the Transformers and a Top Gun sequel is currently in production. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Star Trek.

It was widely reported that Star Trek 4, the fourth film in the Kelvin Timeline series, has been shelved due to salary issues with Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth. In addition S.J. Clarkson, who had been signed to direct, left the project to work on the HBO Game of Thrones prequel.

Despite all that, Star Trek at the cineplex might yet make a comeback thanks to Quentin Tarantino.

It was revealed by Deadline back in December that Tarantino had approached JJ Abrams with an idea for an R-rated Star Trek film starring the Kelvin Timeline cast. This led Abrams to go to Paramount and the result was a writer’s room including Mark Smith, Lindsey Beer, Drew Pearce and Megan Amram to develop the idea with Smith writing the script. Abrams and Tarantino would produce with Tarantino possibly agreeing to direct.

However, with all the drama surrounding Star Trek 4 and no new information about the Tarantino project, it was thought that maybe it wasn’t going to happen. Thing become even more murky when you factor in that Paramount’s deal with Abrams’ Bad Robot is set to end in 2020.

Turns out there was no reason to worry.

In a recent piece in The New York Times about the rebirth of Paramount, they talk to Godfry about the future of several franchises, including Star Trek and he makes it sound like the Tarantino film is a priority for the studio.

"Imagine, for instance, Paramount giving “Star Trek” to Quentin Tarantino. “Suddenly people’s eyes light up,” Mr. Godfrey said. “Yours just did.”"

Of course, things can change literally overnight. Rumors still persist that Viacom (Paramount’s parent company) and CBS could remerge into one entertainment giant. If that happens, odds are that the Star Trek film franchise would be folded into Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout production company, creating a de facto Star Trek Cinematic Universe.

Regardless, it looks like the Tarantino Star Trek film is going to happen. If Paramount wants to make it and the iconic director is willing, they would be stupid not to go forward with producing the movie, which would be a guaranteed hit. It would be totally worth it just to see Samuel L. Jackson flip open a communicator and say “Beam me up motherf*cker!”