Quentin Tarantino Has a Script Ready for His Final Film, But He’s Not Rushing to Shoot It
Few directors have carried a retirement vow as long as Quentin Tarantino. He has famously said he will make only 10 films, so every update on his final film turns into a cinephile event. The waiting game has dragged on for years.
His ninth film, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, arrived in 2019, and he hasn’t returned to the director’s chair since. He counts the 2 ‘Kill Bill’ volumes as a single film, which is why the math on his career has always been a little slippery.
Now there’s a fresh update. On the October 16 episode of ‘The Graham Norton Show’, Tarantino said he has a script he could do and genuinely likes, but he hasn’t committed to making it. In other words, the screenplay exists, and the cameras are not rolling anytime soon.
Tarantino laid out his thinking in a clear order. He wants to do his play first and see who he is afterward, then spend time with his family and live a little before deciding what he wants to do next. That is a long way from a production date.
The play in question is ‘The Popinjay Cavalier’. It is a West End production starring Sacha Baron Cohen, due to open in March.
The project started life as a movie idea. Tarantino began writing it as a screenplay, but once he had everything on the page he realized it worked better as a play. He described it as jumping off from the swashbuckling genre with a French farce quality.
It’s a notable swerve for a filmmaker who built his name on crime stories and revisionist history. It also shows he is still writing and still chasing new forms, even if the 10th film keeps slipping down the schedule.
Real life is also shaping the timeline. Tarantino is 63 and has 2 young children, Leo, 6, and Adriana, 4, with his wife Daniella Pick, who is pregnant. A third child on the way makes a long shoot seem even less urgent.
One outlet put the earliest realistic window for his final film at 2028. It also noted that it has been 7 years since his last film, and the gap will stretch to 8 by next summer.
This isn’t the first time Tarantino has announced a finished script for his last movie. In March 2023, he said in Paris that he had finished the script for what would be his last film, ‘The Movie Critic’, which was set in 1977 and expected to shoot that fall.
The film got surprisingly far down the road. California approved a $20 million tax credit for it, and the script had begun life as an 8-part television series before he reworked it into a feature. Then, in April 2024, reports said he had changed his mind and was going back to the drawing board to figure out what his final movie would be.
His other recent writing has gone to someone else. He wrote the script for Netflix’s ‘The Adventures of Cliff Booth’, which David Fincher directs, with Tarantino involved as a producer. The film is set for a November 25 IMAX release, followed by a Netflix debut on December 23. Tarantino reportedly didn’t want to close out his career with a sequel.
Online reaction to the latest news has been split. Some people welcomed the news that a finished script exists, while others criticized the long delay and urged him to either make the film or retire.
Both camps have a point. A director with Tarantino’s track record can afford to wait, but patience wears thin when a promised final film has been “coming” for years.
Do you think Quentin Tarantino should take his time before making his final film?
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