In a year jam-packed with news that has proved somewhat difficult to swallow, the announcement at the beginning of December that Quentin Tarantino might make a Star Trek movie was undoubtedly one of the biggest trips of them all.

It all started when Tarantino met with JJ Abrams – the guy that put Trek fans through exactly what Star Wars fans are going through at the moment. Abrams loved it, apparently, and took to senior management at Paramount.

Consequently, they got together a bunch of writers, including Mark L Smith (The Revenant), Lindsey Beer (Chaos Walking) and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) and Megan Amram (The Good Place), with Smith being the alleged favourite choice. He became a favorite for Abrams and Paramount after he scripted Julius Avery‘s forthcoming Bad-Robot-produced WWII thriller, Overlord.

Well, now it’s official: Mark L Smith has been recruited to write the screenplay…that should have a working name like Star Trek: WTF or something.

As we previously reported, the film is expected to be rated R as a condition of Tarantino’s involvement. Smith will write while Tarantino works on his next film, the drama set during the summer of Manson’s 1969 murders, which landed at Sony after competitive studio courting.

Details of Tarantino’s pitch have been kept tightly under wraps, but some of the filmmaker’s previous comments about what he’d like to do with the Star Trek franchise, include expanding episodes like City on the Edge of Forever and Yesterday’s Enterprise into feature-length films. “I do think,” Tarantino said,” what could be done, rather than just hokey space stories … You could take some of the great, classic Star Trek episodes and easily expand them into 90 minutes or more, and really do some amazing, amazing stuff.”

There’s no word yet on whether Simon Pegg will be killed in the first few minutes and no release date has been set, but Tarantino’s Manson project is set for August 9th 2019, so if he does intend to direct this thing, we’re going to have to wait a little while.

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