Quentin Tarantino’s swansong: 4 things to know about his now-scrapped final film The Movie Critic

Quentin Tarantino has changed his mind about making The Movie Critic his tenth and final directorial effort. According to what we know, things were shaping up in an interesting way.

Quentin Tarantino, famed for cult films such as Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight, has repeatedly stated that he will retire from filmmaking after ten films. His tenth feature picture, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, stars Leonardo DiCaprio. The film was released in 2019. Also read: Brad Pitt will no longer star in Quentin Tarantino’s final picture, The Movie Critic.

His tenth and final picture was scheduled to be The Movie Critic, but various reports this week indicated that it has been shelved. Here are five fascinating facts about the now-scrapped film.

The plot of The Movie Critic revolves around a “porno rag” writer, inspired by a real-life character Quentin grew up reading. “He wrote about mainstream films and was the second-string critic. I believe he was a really good reviewer. He was extremely cynical. His reviews resembled an early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro’s Taxi Driver character) may be like as a film critic. “Think about Travis’ diary entries,” he continued.

The cast
There were rumors that Brad Pitt might be reprising his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood character Cliff Booth, a stunt man who in Tarantino’s novelisation of the flick, was a major movie lover. However, the filmmaker never confirmed this. According to a new Hollywood Reporter story, even Tom Cruise was considered for the job, since he was the original choice for Cliff but was unable to accept due to scheduling conflicts.

The multiverse
According to THR, Quentin intended to create a universe with this film. “The Hollywood-based story may function as a Tarantino goodbye meta-verse, with the director’s early films placed in the same era as The Movie Critic (which could work, given his films’ ’70s flavor). Tarantino might then bring back some of his earlier work’s stars to reprise their legendary roles in’movie within a movie’ moments, or to play fictional versions of themselves as the actors who played those characters.” He was in talks with returning stars such as John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained), and Margot Robbie (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood).

Olivia Wilde portrays Pauline Kael
According to the same source, Quentin met Olivia Wilde, an actor and filmmaker. While the meeting’s topic remained unclear, a source stated that a female film reviewer modeled like Pauline Kael would play an important role in the film.

According to the details provided above, The Movie Critic was certainly shaping up in an interesting way. But now that Quentin Tarantino has shifted his focus, it will be interesting to see what his final directorial project will be.