MARK L. SMITH EMERGES AS FRONT-RUNNER TO WRITE TARANTINO'S R-RATED STAR TREK

UPDATE: Paramount and JJ Abrams have agreed that Tarantino's 'Star Trek' movie will be R-rated, unlike the more recent PG-13 movies including Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. 

Tarantino met for hours in a writers room with Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce. The frontrunner to get the job is Smith, who is best known for writing The Revenant.

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Quite possibly the most exciting piece of movie news in some time - Quentin Tarantino has apparently come up with a great idea for a Star Trek movie at Paramount. After sharing his idea with JJ Abrams (who himself is busy prepping Star Wars Episode IX), the plan is to assemble a writers room of scribes who’ll hear Tarantino’s take and begin to put together a movie. If it all works out, Tarantino might direct it, with Abrams producing. 

Tarantino is preparing to shoot his ninth feature at Sony Pictures, but the auteur has never taken the reins of an existing featurefranchise. He has only done that on television, twice directing episodes of CSI and once an episode of ER. He has spoken about the appeal of taking on one of the James Bond movies, but the hard part of something like that is getting the rights holders to give him a wide creative swath that comes along with a final cut auteur like Tarantino. This would give a remarkable boost to the venerable franchise for Paramount, which is looking to build them under studio chief Jim Gianopulos.

We'll update this thread further with more developments.