John Cho, who played helmsman Hikaru Sulu in the “Star Trek” film reboot series, has spoken about Quentin Tarantino’s abandoned R-rated gangster-themed movie pitch for a “Star Trek” movie.
Tarantino and Mark L. Smith got as far as writing a script, but the filmmaker then walked away from the idea a few years back. Cho’s co-star Simon Pegg called it “everything you would expect a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek script to be” last year.
The story was reportedly set to unfold on an Earth-like world stuck in a 1930s gangster era, akin to the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “A Piece of the Action” where the crew visits a planet modelled after mob culture.
In a recent Variety interview, Cho says he heard about the project during its development and hoped it would happen:
“I’m actually entering a deep depression right now that it didn’t happen. At the time I’d heard rumors, and Simon [Pegg] is way more inside of it and was privy to information that I was not. I heard that Quentin Tarantino was interested and there was a pitch, but the details were not relayed to me. Was I crossing fingers underneath a desk? Oh yeah.
I can see why people might have paused. Are we making a ‘Star Trek’ movie or just using ‘Star Trek’ to make a Quentin Tarantino movie? It’s a legitimate question, but I just wanted to make a Quentin Tarantino movie. That would have been a dream.”
We’re now a decade removed from 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond” – the biggest gap ever between Trek movies since the films began with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” way back in 1979.
We do know the team behind “Game Night” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” are working on a new one with scriptwriting underway, but there’s no real timetable in place as yet.
Cho can currently be seen in the film “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” which is screening in limited cinemas now.
