‘Wrath of Khan’ Director Pitched a New ‘Star Trek’ Movie to Paramount but Has Yet to Hear Back

Zack Sharf
·2 min read

Nicholas Meyer has deep ties to the “Star Trek” franchise as the director of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” the former of which is often regarded as the best “Star Trek” feature film ever made. More recently, Meyer served as a producer on the first season of the CBS All Access series “Star Trek: Discovery.” It turns out Meyer attempted to return to the “Star Trek” film world by pitching a detailed treatment for a new movie storyline to Paramount, although he tells Trek Movie that he has yet to hear back from the studio.

“My partner Steven-Charles Jaffe and I wrote a whole treatment and plan for a ‘Star Trek’ feature film,” Meyer said. “We didn’t write a whole script. We wrote a very detailed treatment and a whole pitch doc with illustrations. It’s a very comprehensive thing. And we first we took it to Alex Kurtzman, then we took it to J.J. [Abrams], and then we took it to Emma Watts at Paramount.”

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Meyer continued, “It was a detailed proposal for what could have been a film, or it could have been a series, or it could have been a film leading to a series or a series leading to a film…It could be a series of films. Yeah, absolutely.”

Details of Meyer’s “Star Trek” movie treatment were not disclosed, but the filmmaker confirmed the project is designed to be “an independent piece of the ‘Star Trek’ universe based on holes in the chronology, which would allow for the insertion of original material.” The Meyer treatment is based around a group of new characters and does not directly tie into past storylines involving “The Original Series” or “The Next Generation” casts.

Meyer never heard back from Paramount about his treatment, but “he has not given up hope in the idea.” The director might want to get patient, however, as Paramount announced last week it had tapped “Star Trek: Discovery” writer Kalinda Vazquez to pen a new “Star Trek” feature movie. Paramount has developed new “Star Trek” film projects with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, S.J. Clarkson, and Noah Hawley over the last couple years, but the studio put them all on the back burner as it continued figuring out the best way forward for “Star Trek” after the disappointing box office returns for 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond.”

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