Quentin Tarantino is beaming up screenwriter Mark L. Smith.
Smith, best known for penning Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Revenant, is boarding the Star Trek film Tarantino is developing with producer J.J. Abrams, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The project first came to light earlier this month, when news broke that Tarantino had shared a pitch for a Star Trek film with Abrams, and the two had agreed to bring together a writers room to develop the film at Paramount, with Tarantino eyeing the director’s seat.
The idea of a Tarantino-helmed Star Trek comes nearly a decade after Abrams revitalized the franchise for the big screen with his 2009 reboot Star Trek, and followed it up with 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. The most recent outing, Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond (2016), got strong reviews but earned the least in the rebooted film series with just $343.4 million worldwide.
Tarantino is a longtime fan and shared his love for Star Trek in a 2015 Nerdist podcast interview.
“The only thing that limited them was their ’60s budget and eight-day shooting schedule,” he said. “You could take some of the classic Star Trek episodes and easily expand them to 90 minutes or more and really do some amazing, amazing stuff.” The filmmaker also declared Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” as one of the best Star Trek episodes ever written.
Tarantino’s next film is an untitled Charles Manson-themed project, which is due out in 2019.
