Simon Pegg has described Quentin Tarantino’s plans for an R-Rated Star Trek movie as “bats*** crazy,” and offered a hint of how he thought the project might have been received by fans — had it ever come to be.

As unbelievable as it might sound, Tarantino was attached to direct a big screen Star Trek project for several years, after the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction director personally approached Paramount with an idea for a Captain Kirk spin-off.

But despite years of work and a team of writers working on the idea (including Twisters scribe Mark L. Smith and Iron Man 3 co-writer Drew Pearce), the project ultimately never came to fruition — and Tarantino confirmed in 2020 he was no longer on board.

Now, speaking with Collider, Star Trek and Mission Impossible star Simon Pegg has described the idea as “everything you would expect a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek script to be.”

“That was what we call in the business bats*** crazy,” he continued, without divulging quite what the story of the movie would have entailed. “I think it would have been such an incredible sort of curio to see Star Trek through his lens. I don’t know how it would have gone over with the fans, but it certainly would have been an interesting thing.”

Details on the project have always remained hazy, though Mark L. Smith has previously hinted that the plot would have involved Captain Kirk and time travel, with elements drawn from classic gangster movies. Meanwhile, Tarantino himself previously described it as “Pulp Fiction in space.”

The Best Star Trek Series of the Modern Era (and the Worst)Star Trek has been around for so long now that, for the purposes of a listicle like this, it seems only fair to group the franchise’s output by era. You’ve got The Original Series period of the late ’60s, then there’s the movies featuring those old scientists, which then gave way to the Rick Berman era which started with Next Generation and ended with Enterprise, and then of course there’s the modern era of Parmount+ shows which began with Discovery in 2017.<br><br> And that’s what we’re discussing today, as the service formerly known as CBS All Access (remember that?) launches the first straight-to-streaming TV movie, Star Trek: Section 31 (which actually originated as a series). In less than eight years, the modern Trek brain trust has also created five new shows, two of which are animated, as well as a series of shorts known as, of course, Short Treks.<br><br> With the variety of approaches that these different projects have taken on – from straight sci-fi drama to comedy, animation, shorts, feature-length, and more – comparing them to one another is a bit tricky. There’s also the fact that a show can have good and bad seasons, so keep that in mind when looking at our rankings as we’ve taken a series’ entire run into account rather than just focused on a favorite run of episodes.<br><br> So with all that said, let’s make it so, engage, fly, blast off, punch it, or whatever else is your favorite thing to say while cosplaying as a Starfleet captain!

Despite numerous Star Trek TV shows launching over the past decade, the franchise’s future on the big screen has remained far more nebulous. The last proper Star Trek film to release in theaters was 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, the third and (currently) final in the series’ Kelvin reboot timeline, in which Pegg starred as Scotty.

Since then, numerous ideas for further Star Trek films have been floated — including a string of attempts at getting a fourth movie in the reboot series made, but to no avail.

Earlier this year then saw the launch of Star Trek: Section 31, a television movie starring Michelle Yeoh’s character Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery, albeit to strongly negative reviews. IGN’s Section 31 review returned a 2/10 score, and described the project as something that would “infuriate Star Trek fans and bore everyone else.”

Image credit: Kristy Sparow/Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social