Quentin Tarantino turned down directing a Star Trek movie because he didn’t want that to be his last film.

In a recent interview with Collider, screenwriter Mark L. Smith – who worked on a script that Tarantino was in talks to direct – outlined the director’s hesitation over helming a fourth instalment of the re-booted Star Trek franchise.

“Quentin and I went back and forth, he was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films,” Smith told the publication.

The Pulp Fiction director has been open about retiring from directing after completing ten films, with The Movie Critic set to be his last.

“I remember we were talking, and he goes, ‘If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?'” Smith continued. “I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk.”

He added, “I know he said a lot of nice things about it. I would love for it to happen. It’s just one of those things that I can’t ever see happening. But it would be the greatest Star Trek film, not for my writing, but just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it. It was just a balls-out kind of thing.”

Smith compared his script to Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, in that it had a “different feel” to past Star Trek films.

Meanwhile, Tarantino’s ‘final’ film The Movie Critic will be set in California in 1977 and based on a real-life critic who worked for a porno magazine.

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