Watch ‘Star Trek II’ Producer On Paramount Rejecting 2 Future Oscar-Winners To Direct ‘Wrath Of Khan’

Earlier this summer, the 1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever! crowdfunded documentary was announced. TrekMovie has been given a clip from the doc featuring one of the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan interviews.

1982 doc clip: Hugh Hudson and Ron Howard rejected as Wrath of Khan directors

Some familiar names have launched an IndieGoGo campaign to complete work on their new documentary, 1982: The Greatest Geek Year!, which will feature a lot of stories about the making of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan from director Nicholas Meyer, producer Robert Sallin, and unit publicist Eddie Egan as well as many members of the cast and crew.

Here’s an exclusive excerpt of Bob Sallin discussing his struggles to hire a director for Star Trek II.

While Hugh Hudson went on to win the Academy Award for Chariots Of Fire and Ron Howard later won for A Beautiful Mind, Sallin still struck gold when he picked up on the suggestion of Nicholas Meyer to helm the film. The rest is Star Trek history, much of which will be told in 1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever!

1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever! comes out next year

The documentary, which will be released theatrically next year, is produced by several notable Treksperts including film critic Scott Mantz—a producer on The Roddenberry Vault and contributed to the voluminous bonus features on the Blu-rays for the The Next Generation and Enterprise Blu-Ray sets; Roger Lay, Jr.; and Mark A. Altman, Pandora showrunner, author of the bestselling oral history of The Fifty-Year Mission, and the co-host of the Inglorious Treksperts podcast.

For more details or to contribute, visit 1982movies.com.

You can also follow the progress on the film on Twitter @1982movies.

1982 doc poster


Find more coverage of Star Trek documentaries at TrekMovie.com.

28 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Ron Howard might have been a good choice since part of The City on the Edge of Forever took place in Mayberry.

?.
Edge of Forever took place in 1930s New York City. Mayberry was in North Carolina. Totally not getting your attempt.

The sets

The NYC scenes were in part filmed on the same set as what was used for Mayberry.

I think that’s Return of the Archons?

Miri as well.

Spielberg and Lucas were on the list for Star Trek the Motion Picture before they went with Robert Wise. And it isn’t unheard of for big names to be passed over on a movie. EON passed on allowing Spielberg to direct a 007 movie twice. Nearly every studio in town turned down Star Wars. The worst decision Ned Tannen ever made at Universal and the worst decision David Picker every made at United Artists. Its crazy to think the Disney studios passed on both Star Wars and Back to the Future. Or how every single studio in town refused the deal on Raiders of the lost ark except Paramount because of the awful 1941 film. And Star Trek II isn’t just about a director Nick Meyer wrote the screenplay without credit and in 12 days no less. It doesn’t matter the director without that script you have no film.

I was amazed to hear that Return of the Jedi was actually offered to David Lynch and David Cronenberg. So yeah, some big names even refused Star Wars while at the pinnacle of its popularity.

yeah, but lynch tried to do something like it and ended up with ‘dune’

I did actually like his Dune, but I can also see its shortcomings and understand why Lynch didn’t want to work with big budget effects films after that.

good thing EON passed on spielberg or there would have been no indy jones or at least it wouldn’t have been as good without him.
and they turned down matthew vaughn as well, who went off and did his own spy franchise.

Meyer was a poor director; ‘Khan’ looked and felt cheesy.

He only had $11 million dude, it’s invetible it would look cheap. Most of the Trek films had comical budgets compared to bigger franchises.

I don’t think it looked cheap, apart from recycled spacedock footage and maybe the animation on one of the Genesis cave matte paintings.

Regardless, it’s still – 40 years on – the best Trek movie we have ever gotten. I’ve given up hope that their will be another one as great.

Agreed. It’s a great film. I’ve watched it at least a couple times a year since it came out (I was 10). The plot had been spoiled because I’d read the novelization first – and I was still blown away.

I wonder how someone seeing it for the first time now would feel?

Yeah there is one bad matte painting that looks fake in the Genesis cave and reuse of effects from the motion picture in the Kobayashi Maru scene which appear to be outtakes of effects. But other than that there isn’t anything that stands out as cheap. The Mutura nebula scene is still amazing. Montalban is incredible, Nimoy is amazing in Spock’s death scenes. And nobody has ever come close to the incredible score by James Horner except maybe Jerry Goldsmith on the motion picture.

It could be argued the reused TMP footage of the Klingons in the simulation was actual footage of the Klingon attack on Vger that starfleet used thereafter for the KM 😊

keeping budgets down were the right call until they went over on INS and ‘nemesis’

INS they ran out of money to leave the collector in a blue-screen background.
You’d think Paramount would go back in a fix it. At least turn It back to space or something as it looks completely wrong.

Ok boomer

@Kian Can we disagree without the ageist nonsense?

Fascinating. Every word of what you just said was wrong. Meyer is a great director. ‘Khan’ looked and still feels..superior

You do know that The Wrath of Khan was actually made by Paramounts TV division to cut costs so I think Meyer did an incredible job with the TV crew and budget. Also you should remember that Meyer has always been more of a writer than a director.

the genesis wave footage was not cheap

Your opinion is in the deep minority here, sir

It was perfectly fine for 1982.
If you fast forward to JJ trilogy we’ve gone from cheesy to absurd so I guess it’s down to different tastes?!