Quentin Tarantino pitching for next Star Trek movie

Tarantino and Abrams in 2009, via GQ

Rumour is abound that Quentin Tarantino has come up with an idea for a new Star Trek movie, and having pitched it to J.J. Abrams work is afoot to develop it. As Deadline have reported:

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.

Presumably, if Tarantino came to Abrams with this idea, it isn't related to the previously announced fourth Kelvin timeline movie set to feature George Kirk, which Paramount went as far as as announcing the casting of (Chris Hemsworth returning) last year. That was supposed to be written by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, having a second go after their ideas for the third movie were put aside for what became Star Trek Beyond.

Then again, maybe it's not so far off. A couple of years ago, speaking to the Nerdist podcast, Tarantino then revealed he would be interested in working on Star Trek (and clearly continued to "web spin")

One of the things I have... I haven't considered it considered it, like I'm going to do it, but I did web-spin a little bit about the idea... I'm definitely a fan of The Original Series...

And on the spot, he went on to pondered Yesterday's Enterprise being a good candidate for expansion into a movie remake, and off hand seemed quit interested in time travel tales - Would it be so far off to substitute accidentally saving the USS Kelvin somehow, and the Kelvin timeline itself being at stake?

You could take some of the great classic Star Trek episodes and just easily expand them to 90 minutes or more, and really do some amazing, amazing stuff. The obvious one would be City on the Edge of Forever, but that's where everyone would go...

In thinking about that concept even further though, I think one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever written was for Next Generation. [...] there was that episode [Yesterday’s] Enterprise. [...]. I actually think that is one of the great, not only space stories, but the way it dealt with the mythology, the whole thing. That actually could bear a two-hour treatment.

By the way, whatever the status of George Kirk film and the Tarantino proposal (hey, why not have two Star Trek movies in the works?), one thing we can cross off our wish list is for the Beyond dream team of Simon Pegg and Doug Jung returning for an immediate sequel. While many speculated that was afoot when Simon Pegg's twitter posted a photo of them at work last year, today the same Twitter clarified:

Clarification: The project Simon and Star Trek Beyond Co-writer, Doug Jung are working on for Bad Robot is not Star Trek 4. Never was. 🖖🏻