Why Quentin Tarantino Is Adamant He’ll Stop Directing After His 10th Movie
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Quentin Tarantino has plans to cap his distinguished career as a director with one final movie. The big question now is what the film might actually look like.
Multiple outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, have reported that Tarantino scrapped plans for a movie titled The Movie Critic, which would have been his 10th and final directorial project. Although the 61-year-old hasn’t given a public explanation for the about-face, he has provided plenty of hints as to why he might be particularly picky about his next picture.
Known for movies like Pulp Fiction (1994), Inglorious Basterds (2009), and most recently, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019), Tarantino has frequently affirmed he plans to retire after making 10 movies—citing his ultimate goal of “going out on top.” However, his plan isn’t as cut-and-dry as it might appear.
Why does Tarantino only want to make 10 movies?
Tarantino has spoken extensively about his plans to retire, explaining that he doesn’t want to tarnish his legacy by making films with “diminishing returns” late in his career. He has cited directors from the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, such as Billy Wilder and his 1981 comedy flop Buddy Buddy, as examples of people he doesn’t wish to emulate until the very end.
“Most directors have horrible last movies. Usually, their worst movies are their last movies,” Tarantino explained on the Pure Cinema Podcast in June 2021. “So, to actually end your career on a decent movie is rare. To end it with, like, a good movie is kind of phenomenal.”
Still, settling on a 10-film limit appears to have been somewhat arbitrary. Steven Spielberg (Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) and, more recently, Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) each won Academy Awards for Best Director beyond their 10th films. (Tarantino has competed for that coveted Oscar three times and won twice in writing categories.) The Pulp Fiction director has even admitted that if the right project comes along after No. 10, “I won’t not do it just because I said I wouldn’t.”
A more logical explanation for the retirement talk is Tarantino’s age. His first movie, Reservoir Dogs, debuted in 1992, and he has said he feels it’s “time to wrap up the show” after more than three decades of filmmaking. “I’m an entertainer: I want to leave you wanting more and not just work,” he explained to CNN reporter Chris Wallace in 2022. “I don’t want to become this old man who’s out of touch, when already I’m feeling a bit like an old man out of touch when it comes to the current movies that are out right now.”
How many movies has Tarantino directed?
By his own measure, Tarantino has directed nine feature-length movies and expects to lead only one more. However, this tally includes a few caveats.
Most notably, Tarantino counts his two Kill Bill movies, starring Uma Thurman, as one film broken into two parts. Volume 1 released in 2003 followed by volume 2 the next year. If you count each volume as its own release, Tarantino is already at 10.
Tarantino is also credited with directing a segment from the 1995 anthology film Four Rooms, and he served as a guest director for one scene of the 2005 crime thriller Sin City.
Add in writing and producing credits for films like 1996’s From Dusk till Dawn, in which he appears onscreen alongside George Clooney, and 2007’s Grindhouse: Planet Terror, and Tarantino is well into the double digits.
Has Tarantino passed on other projects besides The Movie Critic?
Yes, including a follow-up to the beloved Kill Bill films.
Thurman revealed in 2022 there had been discussions and “real thought” about Kill Bill: Volume 3. But Tarantino killed any buzz about a potential sequel a year later, simply saying, “I don’t see that.” Although given his stance regarding volumes 1 and 2, a third movie likely wouldn’t have counted toward his total anyway.
More intriguingly, Tarantino was apparently close to directing a gritty, R-rated sequel in the Chris Pine–led Star Trek series that began back in 2009. In a December 2023 interview with Collider, screenwriter Mark L. Smith revealed he had discussions with Tarantino about the movie but that the director couldn’t get past the idea of a Star Trek sequel being his last project.
“It’s just one of those that I can’t ever see happening,” said Smith, who also claimed Tarantino still had the script on his desk. “But it would be the greatest Star Trek film, not for my writing, but just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it. It was just a balls-out kind of thing.”
So what will Tarantino’s last movie be?
All we know for now is that, apparently, it won’t be The Movie Critic.
Deadline reported on April 17 that Tarantino simply had “a change of heart” and moved on from the film, which was expected to star Tarantino’s past collaborator Brad Pitt.
However, we can’t rule out that Tarantino might revisit the movie similar to The Hateful Eight. According to the BBC, he initially scrapped plans for that film after an actor shared a copy of the script, which subsequently leaked online. But after a table reading for charity drew immense praise, he returned to the project. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell, The Hateful Eight debuted in December 2015.
What does seem obvious is that Tarantino won’t be in a rush to tackle his milestone production without complete confidence it will succeed. “I trust myself as a writer. I trust my process,” Tarantino said in 2016. “Not every film needs to be made. Not every movie should be made.”
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