News Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Wrath of Khan Director Nicholas Meyer Talks About How He Found His Way Into a Series He Didn’t Get at All Meyer looked elsewhere for his Star Trek inspirations By Molly Templeton | Published on July 10, 2026 Screenshot: Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount Pictures The Star Trek franchise is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, which means we’re seeing—and will likely continue to see—interviews and events celebrating six decades of boldly going. In the lead-up to the Italian Global Series Festival’s Trek-celebrating events, Variety spoke to director Nicholas Meyer, who was brought on to direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after the first film was a hit. It was an expensive hit, though, and Paramount apparently didn’t want to spend so much money again. So, Meyer explains, they hired television producer Harve Bennett and asked, “Can you make a movie better than the first movie for half the money?” Bennett said he could make five movies for less money. The Khan budget, Meyer says, was around $11.2 million. Meyer himself was not a huge Star Trek fan. “I had seen Star Trek on TV, and I didn’t get it at all,” he says. “I missed everything that was interesting about the show, the idea that people of different races and genders and cultures could come together to do something good that blew right by me.” But Meyer liked Harve Bennett, so he apparently said yes to the job. And a few weeks later, he figured out his way in: via his younger self’s love for C.S. Forester’s novels about Captain Horatio Hornblower. “It’s obviously supposed to be Lord Nelson, but it’s a captain in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and he has many adventures, and he has a girl in every port,” Meyer explains. “When you’re 13, this sounded pretty good, and I thought, ‘wait a minute, Kirk is Hornblower in outer space. I know how to do that.’” Meyer was also a writer on the film, though uncredited; by the time he joined the project, the movie had been through multiple rewrites. It is not entirely clear to this writer if he or one of the other screenwriters is to blame for my lifelong fear of ear bugs. [end-mark] The post <i>Wrath of Khan</i> Director Nicholas Meyer Talks About How He Found His Way Into a Series He Didn’t Get at All appeared first on Reactor.