Has Quentin Tarantino cast a leading man for ‘The Movie Critic’?
Quentin Tarantino has seemingly cast the lead role for his upcoming tenth and final film, The Movie Critic. Reports have stated Paul Walter Hauser has been offered the cult director’s final lead role.
Daniel Richtman, via World of Reel, suggested that Hauser was offered the role before the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike began. The actor already has some impressive credits to his name, including Da 5 Bloods, I, Tonya, and BlacKkKlansman.
Tarantino has previously spoken about the inspiration behind The Movie Critic, which is set in California in the late 1970s and based on “a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag”, as he told Deadline.
The director further explained the lead character: “He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic.”
He continued: “He wrote like he was 55, but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn’t clear for a while, but now I’ve done some more research, and I think it was complications due to alcoholism.”
Tarantino was forced to look for a new leading man as none of his previously favoured collaborators fit into the age range for the part.
The Movie Critic will be Tarantino’s first film in four years since the release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2019. Production on the project has been slowed due to the strike, which has been ongoing since Friday, July 14th.
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