Quentin Tarantino Is No Longer Making The Movie Critic as His Final Film

Quentin Tarantino is walking away from his movie The Movie Critic, which had previously been planned as the last film he would direct.

Tarantino just changed his mind about making the film, Deadline exclusively reported on Wednesday. It was set to star Brad Pitt, who also starred in Tarantino’s 2009 war film Inglourious Basterds and his 2019 comedy Western Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

Quentin Tarantino Walks Away From The Movie Critic

Deadline adds that other cast members from Tarantino’s past films were also in talks to join the cast of The Movie Critic, and that Sony may have been attached. The outlet also noted that Tarantino had put the script through rewrites, which delayed production. Now, it seems he has walked away from The Movie Critic completely.

A representative for Tarantino declined to comment.

Last year, The Hollywood Reporter speculated that The Movie Critic could have been about film critic Pauline Kael, the influential critic for whom Tarantino has long expressed respect and admiration.

The move to drop the film is reminiscent of 2014, when Tarantino decided to shelve his movie The Hateful Eight because the script had been leaked.

Also Read: Quentin Tarantino Is No Fan of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

“I’m very, very depressed,” Tarantino told Deadline at the time. “I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today.”

However, he ultimately changed his mind, and the Western thriller came out a year later in 2015. It starred Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Bruce Dern.

Right now, it’s unclear whether Tarantino will replace The Movie Critic with something else for his tenth film. His previously films are Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004), Deathproof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

If he does make another film, it will be his tenth — if you count both Kill Bill movies as one film, as Tarantino does.

Tarantino has said for years that he wants to make a total of 10 films and retire around the age of 60, after which he will perhaps turn to writing books. He has published two books in the last three years: a novelization of his 2019 film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the part memoir, part book of film criticism Cinema Speculation. He’s been very vocal in his opinion that “most directors have horrible last movies.” He wants to go out on top and avoid becoming one of the many directors who overstay their welcome.

In a January 2023 interview with Howard Stern, Tarantino said his favorite of all of his own movies is Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

“For years people used to ask me stuff like that,” Tarantino told Stern. “And then I would usually say something like, ‘Oh, they’re all like my children, and da da da da da da.’ Then I would change it to, ‘Well, it kind of depends on when you ask me. If you ask me one year, or one moment, I could say, oh, Kill Bill. Another one I could say something else.’ But I really do think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is my best movie.”

Tarantino also looks back in the Howard Stern interview to the very start of his career. He said he knew the script to Reservoir Dogs, his first film, had to be so good that a studio would do anything to make it — including let him direct. He said his producer-partner Lawrence Bender used to tell studios that Tarantino wouldn’t even meet with them unless they would allow him to direct Reservoir Dogs.

He said he and Bender told studios: “Don’t try to talk him into anything — we’ll just leave.”

Main Image: Quentin Tarantino in 2014, Wikimedia Commons