‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’ Recalled by Director Nicholas Meyer
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- Nicholas Meyer appeared at the Italian Global Series Festival, which is celebrating 60 years of Star Trek and previewed "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4
- Meyer directed "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" on an $11.2 million budget after producer Harve Bennett recruited him — half the $45 million the runaway 1979 first film cost
- Meyer credits a "little epiphany" linking Captain Kirk to C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels for shaping his approach to the sequel
- Meyer admitted he initially didn't understand what made Star Trek special, telling Variety he thought "the costumes were dopey" and missed the franchise's themes of diverse people uniting for a common good
- Meyer co-created the Netflix historical series "Medici – Masters of Florence," per his Variety interview
- Meyer criticized three-minute vertical dramas financed from China, calling Jeffrey Katzenberg's failed Quibi venture "10-12 years early" and decrying shrinking attention spans
- Meyer argued that phone-watched entertainment forfeits the collective, communal experience of theater and warned that growing formulaic diktats make it harder for creators to "get upstream"
Why it matters: Meyer's $11.2M "Wrath of Khan" is still cited as a benchmark for efficient sequel-making, so his verdict on today's content industry — that short-form vertical dramas are siphoning audiences from the shared theatrical experience — carries weight from a director who once proved low-budget, communal storytelling could rival blockbusters.
