'The Revenant' writer Mark L. Smith is the frontrunner for Quentin Tarantino's R-rated 'Star Trek'
Things are moving fast on the Quentin Tarantino-JJ Abrams love child at Paramount.
According to Deadline, the pair have settled on an R rating (!) and have met with several screenwriters to handle the script for their Star Trek project.
Tarantino met for hours in a writers room with Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce. They kicked around ideas and one of them will get the job. I’m hearing the frontrunner is Smith, who wrote The Revenant. The film will most certainly go where no Star Trek has gone before: Tarantino has required it to be R rated, and Paramount and Abrams agreed to that condition.
That rating was crucially important to Tarantino, who hopes to direct this Star Trek and who has helmed R rated films his entire career.
Smith is probably best known for writing the Alejandro Inarritu's The Revenant which earned a Best Picture nominee back in 2016. Prior to that he wrote the widely-panned 2015 remake of 2008's incredible Martyrs, one of the darkest films you'd ever hope to see.
As Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr points out, Smith most recently overhauled the Abrams-produced WWII thriller Overlord, due out next year.
Smith might get the actual writing credit but let's not forget this is a Tarantino film. Whatever Smith works up will undoubtedly benefit from having Tarantino provide some overwatch.
