The Curious Case of Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek Movie keeps getting weirder and weirder. The news itself was the first off-the-wall idea, with word breaking earlier this week that Tarantino had pitched an idea for a Star Trek movie to producer J.J. Abrams, who sparked to the pitch and quickly made this official. A writers room was assembled incredibly quickly, and Tarantino spent hours with scribes Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Lindsey Beer (Chaos Walking), and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) to kick around ideas on how to tackle Tarantino’s approach.

Per Deadline, Smith is currently the frontrunner to land the job, but the bigger news is that this Star Trek movie will be R-rated. This was a condition of Tarantino being involved, and one that both Abrams and Paramount agreed to. It’s a first for the franchise, but Paramount is in something of a bind as the series has yet to really take off the way it had hoped at the box office, so clearly they’ve sparked to this left-field idea of having Quentin Freaking Tarantino direct it.

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Image via The Weinstein Company

There’s no guarantee Tarantino will direct this movie, but the idea is for the winning scribe to work on the screenplay while the Inglourious Basterds filmmaker shoots his next movie next summer. If the script is to Tarantino’s liking, he’ll direct this Star Trek movie.

Now, Tarantino has been pretty adamant about the fact that he’s only making 10 films and then he’s retiring. His 1969-set Manson Murders drama that he’s shooting next summer is #9, which would make Star Trek #10 if he indeed makes it. Would he stick to his retirement plan? Would Quentin Tarantino really go out directing a blockbuster written by someone other than himself? I have a hard time believing it, so my guess is A. Tarantino simply produces and/or gets a “Story By” credit and someone else directs this movie or B. Tarantino makes one more original movie after Trek.

Regardless, this whole thing is kind of insane and it’s moving really fast. Tarantino usually takes quite a bit of time between projects, but thus far everything about this Star Trek movie has been atypical for the Oscar-winning writer/director. We’ll likely hear more soon, but what do you think about an R-rated Star Trek movie folks?

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Image via Paramount Pictures
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Image via Paramount Pictures