Critically acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has reportedly completed the script of his final movie, according to insiders.
Quentin Tarantino to retire from filmmaking?
In a Hollywood Reporter exclusive, sources close to the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood director revealed the script to his last-ever film, The Movie Critic, is done and if everything goes according to plan, shooting could start in the fall (summer in the southern hemisphere).
While no concrete evidence exists to support rumours of Tarantino’s retirement, the Pulp Fiction director has always maintained that his goal was to release 10 films or retire by the age of 60.
Well, in 2023, Tarantino has written and directed nine critically acclaimed films (that’s if you count the Kill Bill sequel as one) and turns 60 on Monday, 27 March 2023.
Moreover, during an interview with Playboy in 2012, Tarantino made it abundantly clear that, in his view, “directors don’t get better as they get older.”
“I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. I am all about my filmography, and one bad film f—s up three good ones. I don’t want that bad, out-of-touch comedy in my filmography, the movie that makes people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it’s 20 years ago.’ When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty,” he said.
Here’s what we know about ‘The Movie Critic’
Details on Tarantino’s supposed final film are still sketchy at this time. However, according to sources close to the filmmaker, his last directorial contribution will likely be The Movie Critic, a story set in late 1970s Los Angeles (LA) and follows the life and times of a female protagonist.
The Hollywood Reporter speculates the film could be inspired by the life of Pauline Kael, a woman considered, perhaps, the most influential film critic of all time.
Kael etched her name in Hollywood history for her “witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused” reviews as a film critic for The New Yorker between 1968 and 1991.
However, speculation doing the rounds suggests that if Tarantino, a renowned admirer of Kael, does, in fact, build the narrative of his final movie around the no-holds-barred critic, then it would have to be inspired by her tenure as a consultant to Paramount Pictures in 1979.
Casting for The Movie Critic has not yet started and, as it stands, Tarantino’s reported last film has yet to be picked up by a studio.