21st December 2017 - Mark L. Smith to Write Script
EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has set Mark L. Smith to write the script for the R-rated Star Trek movie that was hatched from an idea by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino wants to direct the film, which he’ll produce with JJ Abrams. That means that a writer whose breakthrough came on one of the most celebrated spare dialogue films of recent years will team with Tarantino, a writer/director whose own scripts have run run 165 pages or more, full of dialogue. Smith became a favorite of both Paramount and Abrams after he scripted Overlord, the Julius Avery-directed Bad Robot-produced WWII thriller about two American soldiers caught behind enemy lines on D-Day.
It gives Paramount a shot at reviving a branded franchise, and broadening the universe with an R rating that certainly worked with the X-Men spinoff Deadpool that became the biggest R rated film ever with a $783 million global gross. It offers all kinds of storytelling opportunities, and the opportunity to make a scary space movie like the Ridley Scott-directed Alien. Tarantino is a big fan of the original Gene Roddenberry series.
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7th December 2017 - Will Be R-Rated; The Revenant's Mark L. Smith Frontrunner to Write Script
EXCLUSIVE: After Deadline this week revealed that Quentin Tarantino pitched a Star Trek film to JJ Abrams and Paramount, the whole thing is moving at warp speed. Tarantino met for hours in a writers room with Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce. They kicked around ideas and one of them will get the job. I’m hearing the frontrunner is Smith, who wrote The Revenant. The film will most certainly go where no Star Trek has gone before: Tarantino has required it to be R rated, and Paramount and Abrams agreed to that condition. Most mega budget tent poles restrict the film to a PG-13 rating in an effort to maximize the audience. That was the reason that Guillermo Del Toro’s $150 million At The Mountains of Madness didn’t go forward at Universal, even though Tom Cruise was ready to star. The exception to this rule was Fox’s Deadpool, but that film started out with modest ambitions before it caught on and became the biggest R rated film ever.
This was important to Tarantino, who hopes to direct this Star Trek and who has helmed R rated films his entire career.
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4th December 2017 - Quentin Tarantino & J.J. Abrams Developing Star Trek Movie
Quentin Tarantino is ready to explore strange new worlds.
The filmmaker has a pitch for a Star Trek film, and he has shared his vision with J.J. Abrams, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Tarantino and Abrams have plans to bring together a writers room to develop a film at Star Trek studio Paramount. Tarantino has an eye to direct the potential project.
The studio had no comment.
Abrams rebooted the franchise with 2009's Star Trek and also directed 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness, before pivoting to Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He remains a producer on the Star Trek franchise even as he readies 2019's Star Wars: Episode IX. Paramount previously stated it was developing a fourth Star Trek film to star Chris Hemsworth as Captain Kirk's (Chris Pine) father, but no director has been attached and it's unclear where this Tarantino development leaves the project. The latest installment, Justin Lin's Star Trek Beyond, was well-liked by critics but earned just $343.4 million worldwide, the lowest in the rebooted universe.
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