After three decades behind the camera, Quentin Tarantino is going to be ending his film career with the release of his next movie, The Movie Critic. For years, Tarantino had been insistent that his tenth feature film would also serve as his last, and that was before he’d even decided what the project was going to be. The veteran filmmaker considered various options, from an R-rated Star Trek movie to a remake of Reservoir Dogs. He ultimately decided to pull the trigger on The Movie Critic, a film based on the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael that’s about a critic who writes reviews for an adult magazine in the 1970s.
In a new interview with Deadline, Tarantino reiterated how his plan was to have The Movie Critic be his very last feature film. He declares that he is “ending the filmography,” as The Movie Critic will act as the bookend to the motion picture career that started with his first feature-length film, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino then explained why he’s so committed to hanging it up after the release of The Movie Critic, suggesting he’d rather go out on a high note than to “diminishing returns.” As Tarantino puts it:
“It’s just time. It’s just time to go out. I like the idea of going out on top. I like the idea of giving it my all for 30 years and then saying, ‘OK, that’s enough.’ And I don’t like working to diminishing returns. And I mean, now is a good time because I mean, what even is a motion picture anyway anymore? Is it just something that they show on Apple? That would be diminishing returns.”
Tarantino, like Tom Cruise with Top Gun: Maverick, is also insistent that The Movie Critic be premiered in theaters rather than getting a release on a streaming service. He notes how Ryan Reynolds made tons of money with his Netflix movies, but those films “don’t exist in the zeitgeist,” as a streaming release makes them less notable. Or as Tarantino explains:
“I’m probably going to be doing the movie with Sony because they’re the last game in town that is just absolutely, utterly, committed to the theatrical experience. It’s not about feeding their streaming network. They are committed to theatrical experience. They judge success by asses on seats. And they judge success by the movies entering the zeitgeist, not just making a big expensive movie and then putting it on your streaming platform. No one even knows it’s there.”
Television Might Be Next for Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino also explains how he doesn’t have anything against the small screen, as there’s a place for television, even if he prefers to keep his own feature films to big screen releases. While Tarantino won’t be making any more films after The Movie Critic, he teased that this doesn’t mean he can’t be working on television shows, so he could be right back behind the camera soon enough. Meanwhile, Tarantino also suggests he’ll probably be doing much more writing after The Movie Critic is released.
“No, I could do a TV show. I didn’t say I’m going to go into the night darkly, all right? I could do a TV show. I could do a short film. I could do a play. All kinds of things I could do, but I’ll probably just be more of a writer.”
It’s not yet clear when The Movie Critic will be released.