Quentin Tarantino's unmade Star Trek 4 movie has become one of the franchise's great "What If?" questions, but it didn't happen for a number of reasons. The Tarantino project was just one of many prospective versions of Star Trek 4, the next entry in J.J. Abrams' Kelvin Timeline franchise. Various versions of Star Trek 4 have risen and fallen since 2016, including a return by Chris Hemsworth as Lt. George Samuel Kirk in a time travel movie. The most intriguing of these possible Star Trek 4 ideas was the script written by Quentin Tarantino and Mark L. Smith, writer of the Oscar winning Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant.

The long wait for Star Trek 4 has been exasperating for fans and industry figures alike, including J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie cast. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are the latest delays to the project, but a new script had been teased by Abrams just prior to the commencement of industrial action. Whether that script turns into a successful fourth outing for the Kelvin Timeline crew remains to be seen, but it could just as easily find itself shelved alongside Quentin Tarantino's unmade Star Trek movie.

What Was Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek Movie & Why Didn’t It Happen?

Quentin Tarantino's movie would have been based on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action", in which the Enterprise crew discovers a planet with a culture based on 1920s gangsters. Rather than set the movie on a planet that had been inspired by an old history book, Tarantino's Star Trek 4 would have sent Kirk's Enterprise back to 1920s or 30s Chicago. It's an idea that would certainly have played to Tarantino's strengths as a filmmaker and aficionado of genre cinema. Tarantino is also an unabashed fan of Chris Pine's version of Captain Kirk, and the actor's work in general, so it's disappointing that they never got to work together on Star Trek.

When J.J. Abrams confirmed in 2023 that Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet were working on a new script for Star Trek 4 it confirmed that Tarantino's version wouldn't be happening. Just over a year earlier, Star Trek CEO Rod Roddenberry may have subtly revealed why Tarantino's movie never happened in a 2021 interview with Forbes. Roddenberry said that he loved Tarantino and his work but that "If you create a Star Trek, that is just action; that is not Star Trek, in my opinion." It's possible, therefore, that Tarantino's Trek was not in line with Roddenberry's vision for the franchise.

Could Quentin Tarantino Still Direct Star Trek 4?

Quentin Tarantino has stated that his tenth and final movie will be The Movie Critic, which means it's unlikely that he'd sign on for Star Trek 4. He'd already distanced himself from the project before Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet were confirmed as the latest screenwriters. Now that it seems that his script and story idea have been dropped in favor of something else, Tarantino is even less likely to return to direct the Star Trek Beyond sequel.

Quentin Tarantino confirmed as much back in 2020 when he told Consequence of Sound (via Indie Wire) that he was "steering away" from directing the project. As much as he was clearly excited about his prospective Star Trek 4, his desire to direct 10 movies and retire was clearly much stronger than his desire to do a franchise picture. Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek movie is destined to be one of those intriguing unmade projects that make up the franchise's 57-year history. However, if the existence of the Kelvin Timeline has taught fans anything, it's that in an alternate universe somewhere, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are wielding tommy guns in Quentin Tarantino's Star Trek 4.