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Quentin Tarantino’s final movie: everything we know about so far

Thu 18 April 2024 11:56, UK

There is often a vast disconnect between audiences who enjoy mainstream blockbusters and obscure arthouse films. However, one filmmaker has always served as the connection between the two separate domains: Quentin Tarantino. Having burst onto the landscape of American independent cinema with Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s cinematic experiments changed the fundamental frameworks of American filmmaking in the 1990s.

Having developed a vast following for his irresistibly stylish, hyper-violent gems such as Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has established himself as a major voice in the world of arthouse action. Due to the highly successful nature of his filmography, Tarantino has been looking to end his career on a similar high and quit while he’s ahead. In many interviews, the director has maintained that he is going to make one final film before stepping down from the global stage.

Many have speculated about the details pertaining to his final project, especially because there have been many contradictory reports about the nature of Tarantino’s last film. While some fans have insisted that Tarantino is going to make a Star Trek movie before he quit, others have cited prior interviews where the auteur expressed his desire to work on a wide variety of subjects – ranging from softcore pornography to a John Brown biopic.

However, it seems like all the omnipresent speculation can finally come to an end since Tarantino has revealed new details about his last project. In an exclusive published by The Hollywood Reporter, information about Tarantino’s next film has surfaced, and it has defied most of the rumours circling on the internet. Join us as we uncover more about what Tarantino’s final movie is going to be like and what it’s all about.

What has Quentin Tarantino been working on?

Ever since Tarantino released Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the director has been talking about his future film. Even before his 2019 work was released, there were some reports about the filmmaker’s impending retirement, but that hasn’t been the case. One of the most accomplished products of his extensive career, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood starred Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in one of the best projects of their lives.

Since then, the director created a novelisation of the 2019 film and published a new book last year called Cinema Speculation, which explored his lifelong relationship with cinema. During these side projects, Tarantino was repeatedly asked about his final film, and the director hinted that it might be an addition to the Kill Bill saga.

“I think it’s just revisiting the characters twenty years later and just imagining the Bride and her daughter, Bebe, having 20 years of peace, and then that peace is shattered,” Tarantino said in an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience while talking about the cinematic universe. “And now The Bride and Bebe are on the run, and just the idea of being able to cast Uma [Thurman] and cast her daughter Maya [Hawke] in the thing would be fucking exciting.”

Quentin Tarantino - Director - 2010s - London — Credit: Alamy

What is Tarantino’s final movie called?

In addition to the reports about Kill Bill 3, Tarantino also claimed that he was interested in making a comedy film contextualised within the world of spaghetti westerns. According to the director, the project would be a multilingual work that would inevitably feature some of his beloved trademarks – entertaining violence and cool stylisations.

“It’s not like my next movie. It’s a piece of something else that I’m thinking about doing — and I’m not going to describe what it is,” Tarantino said. “But part of this thing, there is supposed to be a spaghetti western in it… I’m looking forward to shooting that [thing] because it’s going to be really fun. Because I want to shoot it in the spaghetti western style where everybody’s speaking a different language.”

However, that’s unlikely to be the case anymore since sources revealed in March 2023 that Tarantino’s final film was tentatively called The Movie Critic. As the title suggested, it probably had nothing to do with Kill Bill 3 or spaghetti westerns, which means that all the social media posts churned out by the rumour mill were on the wrong track.

And yet, a year later, sources close to Tarantino suggest the director has now shut down all work on The Movie Critic months before shooting was supposed to begin. This latest news leaves plans for his last movie up in the air.

What was The Movie Critic going to be about?

Although most details about the project are still under wraps, sources initially claimed that The Movie Critic was set in Los Angeles during the late 1970s and featured a female lead. Due to the connection between these two details, many have suggested that The Movie Critic was going to be about Pauline Kael – one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century.

During an interview at Cannes in 1992, Tarantino labelled Kael as one of his “cinema teachers”. He said: “I got her book, When the Lights Go Down, when I was sixteen. I read it and thought, ‘Someday maybe I’ll be able to understand a movie like she does.’ I’ve read everything she’s ever written for The New Yorker and got all her books, and I’ve learned as much from her as I have from filmmakers.”

While talking about the lessons he learnt from Kael, Tarantino gushed with praise for the late writer. The filmmaker added: “She taught me a sense of how to be dramatically engaging, how to make a connection with the audience. She was my professor. In the film school of my own making, she was like my Kingsfield in The Paper Chase.”

In February 2024, however, it emerged that Tarantino was actually basing the story’s film critic protagonist “on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.” Brad Pitt was allegedly on board in the lead role, with rumours swirling that his character Cliff Booth from Once upon a Time in Hollywood would return, having taken his career in a very different direction.

Now it seems as though the writer-director has put himself off the idea altogether. The Movie Critic looks set to be added to the long list of shelved Tarantino projects that have never come to fruition.

Does Quentin Tarantino have a new idea for his final movie?

It remains to be seen where Tarantino will turn next in search of inspiration for his final film project. Will he go back to his first plans, for a third volume of Kill Bill or a comedy spaghetti western?

Is there room for another of his shelved ideas to emerge as the frontrunner, like a remake of the Rambo film First Blood, or his take on sci-fi horror? Or should we be ready for something entirely new and unexpected?

With Tarantino, one thing is for sure. Nothing is off the table. And whatever type of movie he decides to make, it will be unquestionably, quintessentially Quentin.

What else is Tarantino working on?

At this point, most of the conversation is obviously going to be about his tenth and final film, which is only becoming more interesting as uncertainty around it mounts. Tarantino has previously demonstrated his incredible ability to adapt different cinematic genres to his own inimitable style of filmmaking. However this project turns out, he seems determined to showcase the breadth of his talents behind the camera to their fullest extent.

For a director who is actively thinking about retirement, Tarantino is surprisingly active in other media, as he has also been linked to a TV series. During a book tour in New York City, while promoting CInema Speculation, the filmmaker opened up about a potential new TV series set to be filmed last year, with Netflix in line to release it. All in all, Tarantino is going out with a bang.