Quentin Tarantino debates whether directing a Star Trek movie would really be his last

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino has repeatedly insisted that he plans to retire from filmmaking after completing ten films, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (out July 26) being his ninth. But Tarantino has also recently shown interest in directing a Star Trek film, from a script by Mark L. Smith, who wrote The Revenant.

“I don’t know if I’ll do it or not,” Tarantino recently said, in an interview with Deadline. “I’ve got to figure it out, but Mark wrote a really cool script. I like it a lot. There’s some things I need to work on but I really, really liked it.”

So, would a Tarantino-directed Star Trek movie count as his tenth — and thus, final — film? Or would he consider a project which found him essentially playing in someone else’s creative sandbox, and based on another writer’s script, not a true Tarantino joint?

“You know, I think it has to count,” he tells EW. “I think it has to count. A year ago, I was thinking [adopts a pompous auteur voice], Well, okay, if I do Star Trek, naturally my last one would have to be one I wrote. Now, I’m like, ‘No, no, if I want to do Star Trek that much, I need to want to do it that much.’ We’ll see.”

Watch the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, below.

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