An adaptation of this Star Trek: The Original Series episode would have been the best Star Trek movie we never got, and it would have been directed by Quentin Tarantino. There was a brief window when the acclaimed, Oscar-winning filmmaker wanted to make an R-rated Star Trek 4.
Star Trek movies have been inspired by episodes of the television series. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a big screen version of a Gene Roddenberry story titled “In Thy Image” that was intended for the aborted Star Trek: Phase II TV series.
Director Nicholas Meyer was inspired by the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Space Seed” to make Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan a sequel that brought back Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) to seek vengeance on Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner).
The most successful Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, Star Trek: First Contact, was a sequel to “The Best of Both Worlds,” where Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-E saved Earth from a Borg invasion and time travel plot.
However, Quentin Tarantino had a different plan: to directly adapt a classic Star Trek 1960s episode into a feature film starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, that would also ignore the three previous Star Trek films produced by J.J. Abrams.
Quentin Tarantino Wanted To Make This Star Trek: The Original Series Episode Into A Movie
Quentin Tarantino wanted to adapt Star Trek: The Original Series season 2, episode 17, “A Piece of the Action” into an R-rated Star Trek movie, which the director likened to “Pulp Fiction in space.”
“A Piece of the Action” saw Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise travel to Signa Iota II, a planet whose human inhabitants created a 1920s gangster society. Kirk and Spock became mired in the pinstripe-suit-wearing, Tommy gun-toting mob wars until the Captain negotiated a deal between the Iotians and the United Federation of Planets.
Star Trek’s “A Piece of the Action” has gained a reputation as one of the zanier episodes of the 1960s series, making entertaining use of Paramount Studios’ backlot and gangster props and costumes. “A Piece of the Action” is a distinctive and memorable classic Star Trek episode, and it suits Quentin Tarantino’s sensibilities.
Tarantino and producer J.J. Abrams set up a writer’s room in 2019, with Mark L. Smith chosen to write the screenplay, which Quentin felt he could improve upon. Tarantino did want the Starship Enterprise cast, led by Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, to star in the film.
However, Quentin Tarantino didn’t want his Star Trek gangster movie set in J.J. Abrams’ alternate Kelvin timeline, which Abrams encouraged him to “ignore.” Instead, Quentin wanted his film to be a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series.
Why Quentin Tarantino Didn’t Make His Star Trek Movie
Several factors led to Quentin Tarantino walking away from his gangster version of Star Trek 4, although J.J. Abrams and Paramount were enthusiastic about the Oscar-winning director making a Star Trek movie.
Ultimately, Quentin Tarantino set a plan for himself to direct 10 feature films before retiring. 2019’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was Tarantino’s 9th movie, and Star Trek 4, if he’d directed it, would have been movie number 10.
Quentin Tarantino couldn’t reconcile the idea of Star Trek being the movie that would end his famed directing career.
Yet Quentin Tarantino couldn’t reconcile the idea of Star Trek being the movie that would end his famed directing career. Quentin considered a “loophole” where Star Trek “wouldn’t count” as his 10th movie, but in the end, Tarantino decided in December 2019 that he was “steering away” from directing it.
Meanwhile, Paramount was also pursuing other versions of Star Trek 4 with directors like S.J. Clarkson and Matt Shakman that also fell apart in development hell due to “creative differences,” including an idea where Chris Hemsworth would return as Lt. George Kirk to team with his son, Captain James T. Kirk.
Star Trek 4 Is A Dead Movie
As the calendar turns from 2025 to 2026, the year of Star Trek‘s 60th anniversary, there is still no Star Trek movie coming to movie theaters. 2026 will mark ten years since Star Trek Beyond, the last Star Trek film to grace movie screens, and it’s reportedly the last voyage of the Chris Pine-led USS Enterprise.
Variety‘s cover story about Paramount Skydance led by new CEO David Ellison said: “The hope is to have a fresh ‘Star Trek’ movie, though the studio has moved on from the idea of bringing back Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and the rest of the ensemble from the J.J. Abrams reboot.” This indicates Star Trek 4 is officially dead at Paramount in favor of an undecided “fresh” idea.
In early 2024, Paramount announced a Star Trek Origin movie set before J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was in development with director Toby Haynes, but nothing more transpired. Screenwriter Steve Yockey was also hired to write a new version of Star Trek 4, which joins the list of scrapped Star Trek 4 ideas, while X-Men producer Simon Kinberg was brought aboard to oversee Star Trek movies.
Paramount Skydance considers Star Trek movies and streaming TV series a “priority” for the studio. While fans hope there will be progress towards a new Star Trek movie in 2026, Quentin Tarantino seems to be out of the conversation. Although Tarantino scrapped The Movie Critic as his 10th movie and is pursuing new ideas for his final film as a director, he is unlikely to return to his Star Trek idea.
Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek movie is one of the great “What Ifs?” in recent franchise history. Watching Star Trek: The Original Series‘ “A Piece of the Action,” one can’t help but wonder what Tarantino’s Star Trek gangster yarn would have been like, with Chris Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock wearing pinstripe suits and toting Tommy guns.
- Release Date
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1966 – 1969-00-00
- Showrunner
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Gene Roddenberry
