Quentin Tarantino's F-King 'Star Trek' Movie Beams Up A Writer [Updated]

Update: Deadline has confirmed that Mark L. Smith will write Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek movie. This story is strange for many reasons, but it's especially strange since Tarantino has always penned his own projects. Our original story continues below.

Earlier this week, news broke that Pulp Fiction filmmaker Quentin Tarantino would be joining the Star Trek franchise via an idea he pitched to J.J. Abrams. The news sounded almost too strange to be true, and that perhaps any moment we'd learn a mistake had been made. But now even more details about Tarantino's Star Trek have arrived, including the revelation that the film will be R-Rated, per Tarantino's stipulations. In addition to this news, The Revenant writer Mark L. Smith has emerged as the frontrunner to pen the script. Folks, this continues to seem very, very weird.

Despite our disbelief, a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie is really happening. After news broke Monday that Tarantino had pitched a concept for a new Star Trek film to Star Trek reboot director J.J. Abrams, and that Abrams and Paramount were planning to assemble a writers room to hash-out Tarantino's idea, more Tarantino Trek news has arrived. Deadline reports that Tarantino's Star Trek film will be the first R-rated movie in Trek history. According to the Deadline story, this was a major stipulation for Tarantino: the only way they'd get to use his idea is if the inevitable film is rated R.

Tarantino met in a writers room with Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Lindsey Beer (Godzilla vs. Kong), and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) to kick around ideas for the film, and rumor has it that Smith has emerged as the frontrunner to pen the script. Of all the strange details about this potential film, this, to me, is the strangest: Tarantino has always written his own screenplays, and it's weird that he'd want someone else to write the script for his Star Trek movie.

Deadline says Paramount is moving quickly to get Tarantino's Star Trek film off the ground, and that the script will be written as Tarantino shoots his next film, which centers around the summer of 1969 and involves the Manson Family murders in some capacity. If all goes according to plan, Tarantino will follow-up his Manson movie with Star Trek, which could be his 10th and final film before retiring (if indeed he's still planning to retire after his tenth movie, as he has said in the past).

There are so many questions now. Just what is this great idea Tarantino has? Does it involve the cast of J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek universe, or is it a complete reboot? Is that previously-announced idea involving Chris Pine's Kirk reuniting with his dead father, played by Chris Hemsworth, still a plot point here, or has that been scrapped entirely? Why does it have to be rated R, exactly? How is any of this really happening? Who the hell knows! Hopefully we'll know more soon, unless we all wake up and realize this was just a weird fever dream we collectively had.