Meyer recalls Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at 60 years
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer told Variety that before filming the classic sequel, he barely understood the original series—yet delivered what many call the franchise's best movie on an $11.2 million budget as Italy's Global Series Festival marks 60 years of Star Trek.
Key Takeaways
- Meyer spoke to Variety ahead of the Italian Global Series Festival's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 sneak peek and 60th-anniversary celebration.
- Executives tasked Harve Bennett with making a sequel better than the $45 million first film for roughly half the money; Wrath of Khan's budget landed near $11.2 million.
- Meyer initially dismissed the TV show's costumes and missed its unity theme, then modeled Kirk on Captain Horatio Hornblower.
- He warned that phones and short-form video erode the communal theater experience he values in cinema.
- Meyer also co-created Netflix's Medici – Masters of Florence and reflected on how serialized TV competes for shrinking attention spans.
Why is Nicholas Meyer talking about Star Trek now?
In the build-up to the Italian Global Series Festival's sneak peek of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 and a celebration of Star Trek at 60, Meyer sat down with Variety's Kambole Campbell. The July 10, 2026 interview covers his franchise legacy, the current television landscape, and his work co-creating the Netflix series Medici – Masters of Florence.
Variety notes that The Wrath of Khan is reckoned by many to be the best Star Trek movie, even though it faced huge challenges, as many hits do. For more franchise and premiere news, follow our Streaming & TV Alerts coverage.
What budget pressure shaped Star Trek the Wrath of Khan?
Meyer said he has not followed the franchise's evolution closely since his films. He was invited to the second movie after the first Star Trek film became a runaway production that cost $45 million in 1979 yet still made money. Executives wanted another installment without spending anywhere near that figure.
Producer Harve Bennett—known for Rich Man Poor Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman—was brought in with a blunt mandate. They asked whether he could make a movie better than the first for half the money. Bennett replied he could make five movies for it. The Wrath of Khan's budget was about $11.2 million.
Bennett's team cycled through script after script, reaching five drafts before Meyer came aboard to direct.
How did Meyer go from skeptic to director?
Meyer had seen Star Trek on television and did not get it at all. He missed what he later called the show's most interesting idea: people of different races, genders, and cultures working together for good. He mostly thought the costumes looked dopey.
Three weeks before draft five arrived, Meyer had an epiphany tied to a childhood favorite. At 13, he discovered the adventures of Captain Horatio Hornblower—a Royal Navy captain during the Napoleonic Wars with adventures in every port. Meyer realized Kirk was Hornblower in outer space. I know how to do that, he recalled thinking.
What does Meyer think about TV and cinema today?
At the festival, Meyer addressed the growing overlap between cinema and television. He pointed to shrinking attention spans—even film students, he said, struggle to sit through a full movie—and the rise of vertical dramas, often financed from China. He likened the moment to Jeffrey Katzenberg's Quibi, which arrived years too early for phone-based short episodes.
Meyer still draws a line between communal art and private screens. He argued that theater, opera, ballet, and movies ask audiences to commit: travel, buy a ticket, and share laughter or tears with strangers. That collective journey, he warned, is being forfeited as viewing shifts to phones.
On serialized storytelling, Meyer compared ongoing series to Dickens and Dumas installments, citing Breaking Bad's arc for Walter White. Cliffhangers date back to The Odyssey, he noted, but today's formulaic rules and competition make it harder and harder for the salmon to get upstream.
Read the full interview at Variety.