Quentin Tarantino has already blessed cinema with plenty of great films that include Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and From Dusk Till Dawn, but it appears the celebrated filmmaker known for his sharp dialog has finally run out of ideas worth putting on the screen. As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter this week, Tarantino plans to direct a new movie called The Movie Critic this fall, and it will seemingly be his final film. Sources say that the movie will be set in late 1970s Los Angeles and feature a female lead, which has led some to speculate that it will concern Pauline Kael, an influential movie critic who had ties with Paramount. Tarantino’s most recent project is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a comedy-drama about a faded television actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt) who try to achieve fame and success in the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles, released in 2019.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
It is possible the story focuses on Pauline Kael, one of the most influential movie critics of all time. Kael, who died in 2001, was not just a critic but also an essayist and novelist. She was known for her pugnacious fights with editors as well as filmmakers. In the late 1970s, Kael had a very brief tenure working as a consultant for Paramount, a position she accepted at the behest of actor Warren Beatty. The timing of that Paramount job seems to coincide with the setting of the script — and the filmmaker is known to have a deep respect for Kael, making the odds of her being the subject of the film more likely.
The project does not have a studio home; it could go out to studios or buyers as early as this week, according to sources. One frontrunner could be Sony, where Tarantino has a tight relationship with topper Tom Rothman. Sony distributed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the filmmaker’s 2019 opus on 1960s moviemaking, and also gave him a unique deal in which the copyright reverts to him over time. Hollywood also won two Oscars after nabbing 10 nominations and grossed over $377 million worldwide.
The filmmaker has long maintained he had a finite number of movies in him, saying he wanted to direct 10 films or retire by the time he was 60. The writer-director has made nine (if you count the two Kill Bill movies as one) and turns 60 later this month.