by Quentin Tarantino has long insisted that he would retire from filmmaking after his 10th film or when he turns 60.
With the Pulp Fiction director reportedly penning a script called The Movie Critic that he intends to shoot later this year, there is speculation once again that it will be the last we see of Tarantino.
To know more: Tarantino shares his favorite movie of the last decade
The Movie Critic would be Tarantino’s tenth film and he will also be 60 this year.
What did Quentin Tarantino say about retirement?
Tarantino first hinted at seeing the end during a 2012 interview with Playboy where he said, “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 the last four at the end. I’m only concerned with my filmography, and one bad film ruins three good ones.
“I don’t want that bad, offbeat comedy in my filmography, the movie that makes people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it’s been 20 years.’
“When directors become obsolete, it’s not nice.”
However in 2015, speaking to Yahoo, he said his plan was not yet set in stone.
“Yes, that’s the idea [to retire after 10 movies]I could always change it,” he said while promoting The Hateful Eight.
“But frankly I like the idea, to tell you the truth. I mean look, ten movies to me is max six years and the last eight years. And anyway, if the film goes the way of the dodo, I might as well not make ten.”
In recent years, Tarantino has branched out into other areas, including writing a novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his first book on film criticism Cinema Speculation, and last year he started a podcast with fellow director Roger Avary where they discuss cult films.
Quentin Tarantino’s official filmography so far
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Reservoir Dogs (1992)
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Pulp Fiction (1994)
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Jackie Brown (1997)
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Kill Bill vols 1 and 2 (2003/2004)
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Death Proof (2007)
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Inglourious Basterds (2009)
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Django Unchained (2012)
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The Hateful Eight (2015)
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
The director has also expressed interest in writing more books and creating a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood TV spin-off.
During an interview with CNN in 2021, Tarantino reiterated that he doesn’t want to lose sight of each other: “I’ve been doing this for a long time.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and it’s, it’s time to wrap up the show. Like I said, I’m an entertainer. I want to leave you wanting more, you know, and not just working and I don’t want to work for diminishing returns.
“I don’t want to become this old man who’s out of this world, when I already feel a little bit like this old man out of this world when it comes to the current movies that are coming out right now. And that’s what happens.”
Tarantino also extensively discussed his future during an appearance on the Pure Cinema Podcast.
He said: “Usually their worst films are their last films. This is the case with most of the Golden Age directors who ended up making their last movies in the late 60s and 70s, then it ended up being the case with most of the New Hollywood directors who made their their last films at the end of the 1900s. 80s and 90s”.
To know more: Tarantino got Pierce Brosnan drunk and offered him a Bond movie
Tarantino even joked that he wouldn’t be making any more movies after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was such a hit: “Maybe I shouldn’t make another movie because I might be really happy to turn the mic down.
“That’s the frustrating part… a lot of the really great directors, it’s like their antepenultimate film would be great, great to end up with, which goes back to what I was saying about myself.
“Or you know, if Don Siegel had stopped with Escape from Alcatraz, oh my fucking god. What a career…that really said it all. The other two were just jobs.”
What will be Quentin Tarantino’s last film?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino’s tenth film is called The Movie Critic and is “set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center.”
Speculation suggests the film will be about legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael and cover the writer’s brief tenure working as a consultant for Paramount in the 1970s.
To know more: The best jokes about Tarantino’s film
The director contributed to a 2015 documentary about Kael titled What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, and said, “Most filmmakers, especially the older generation, didn’t care much about the critics.”
“We grew up with her as our kind of Kerouac movie, if you will.”
Watch below: Quentin Tarantino’s latest film will be called The Movie Critic
