Quentin Tarantino Plans Next Film, ‘The Movie Critic’

Once upon a time in Hollywood … again?

According to reports, Quentin Tarantino is preparing his next movie as a director. And if Tarantino is a man of his word, this will be his final work as a filmmaker. (In the past he’s vowed to only direct 10 movies; this would be his tenth following Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill (which he considers just one movie), Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the project is titled The Movie Critic — the script is reportedly already written — and is “set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center.” They speculate that the film could actually be a biopic about Pauline Kael, the legendary film critic who was at the height of her power during that time (and also briefly took a job working at Paramount Pictures). Tarantino apparently wants to shoot the film this fall.

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Film criticism has long been an interest of Tarantino’s. He recently published his first collection of film criticism, Cinema Speculation, which does include essays that talk about Kael and her reaction to certain films in this same 1970s time period. Tarantino also has his own podcast, The Video Archives Podcast, with his Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary. And, of course, the project would dovetail with — and could potentially be a kind of spiritual sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — which was about the world of movies and Los Angeles in the 1960s, whereas, at least according to THR, this one is about L.A. in the 1970s.

If true, this is both an intriguing subject for Tarantino and kind of a depressing one — if only because it makes you want to see his movie about ’80s Hollywood or ’90s Hollywood too. (Tarantino would have to be a fictional character in that last one.) But if Tarantino sticks to what he has said in the past, he will never make those.

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