New chief, new ideas. That is how things stand at Paramount with the new option pictures chief Emma Watts who is trying to re-assess what is to be done with Star Trek, their biggest sci-fi franchise. Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire all caught up on the story.
One of the prior possibilities is now on the back burner, and its authors are not too happy. Noah Howley who created the Fargo TV version came up with a plot that as THR notes, centers around a virus that wipes out vast parts of the known universe, “a topic that’s not seen as a good or sensitive fit if you’re making escapist entertainment given the current coronavirus pandemic.”
The second possibility would be “to reunite the cast of the reboot made by J.J. Abrams several years ago.” But the one currently having the biggest chance to come about seems to be a 1930s gangster version of Star Trek, and as Deadline cites rumors, it’s “based on an episode of the classic Star Trek series that takes place largely earthbound in a ’30s gangster setting.”
Essentially, The Revenant author Mark E. Smith envisions it as a “Pulp Fiction in space,” so it is no wonder that Quentin Tarantino was initially slotted to direct, although that possibility at this moment is a bit remote.
According to IndieWire, this version of the project “sounds a lot like ‘A Piece of the Action,’ episode 17 of season two of Star Trek: The Original Series. Here, Kirk’s Enterprise visits Sigma Iotia II, a faraway planet where everyone happens to carry Tommy guns and talk like gangsters from the 1920s.”
