A Once Upon A Time In Hollywood spin-off, and The Movie Critic: both films reportedly films killed off by Quentin Tarantino.
Well, we didn’t have to wait long for more details to emerge regarding the shock cancellation of Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic. Yesterday, we covered the report that stated Tarantino had abandoned the plans for his final film and would instead begin on an entirely new project. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit it now looks like Tarantino has actually scrapped two films.
The report states that Tarantino actually decided to abandon The Movie Critic months ago. Late last year, he instead decided to change course and instead wrote a spin-off film connected to 2019’s Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood. That story focused on Cliff Booth’s stuntman character played by Brad Pitt and was separate to The Movie Critic.
However, at some point Tarantino decided that this project also wasn’t the right one to mark his swansong as a director. Instead, he has decided to abandon both projects and start with something new.
Several pieces have sprung up (at outlets like World of Reel, The Hollywood Reporter) in the aftermath of Tarantino’s decision, questioning his long-standing plan to retire after ten films. If nothing else, this self-imposed restriction seems to have made him very self-reflexive, questioning his own creative direction to the point that he seems to be placing an inordinate amount of pressure on himself to cap off an extraordinary career with a flourish.
We understand Tarantino’s desire to walk away from directing with a collection of films that don’t decline in quality but at the same time, he’s placed himself in a position as an artist where his own thoughts on legacy have become irreversibly mixed up with his art. How that affects a filmmaker’s instincts we aren’t sure but for a filmmaker who was once so bold, Tarantino is now being depicted an artist whose tendency to self-mythologise may have finally caught up with him as he now seems reticent to pull the trigger on projects for fear of how he will be remembered.
We’ll bring you more on this story (or Tarantino’s next project) as we hear it.
