Quentin Tarantino explains why he pulled the plug on The Movie Critic
Quentin Tarantino has explained why he ultimately decided not to make The Movie Critic his 10th and final film.
Quentin Tarantino "wasn't really that excited" about The Movie Critic.
The 62-year-old director has long declared he will retire after making his 10th movie and after previously announcing what his last project would be, it was revealed last April he had had a change of heart, and he's now shared some insight into his decision.
Speaking on The Church of Tarantino podcast, the Kill Bill filmmaker was "very happy" with what he had originally written as an eight-part series before turning it into a script for a feature film, but ultimately lost enthusiasm in pre-production.
He said: “No one’s waiting for this thing per se. I mean, I can do it whenever I want. I mean, it’s already written. So OK, let me just not start it right now.
“Let me try writing it as a movie and let me see if it’s better that way. And I was like, ‘Oh, OK, no, I think this is going to be the movie.’ And then it wasn’t. I pulled the plug on it. And the reason I pulled the plug, it’s a little crazy.”
Tarantino noted he "really,really likes" The Movie Critic but it had given him a "challenge".
He said: "There was a challenge that I gave to myself when I did it. Can I take the most boring profession in the world and make it an interesting movie?
“Every Tarantino title promises so much, except The Movie Critic.
“Who wants to see a TV show about a f***ing movie critic? Who wants to see a movie called The Movie Critic? If I can actually make a movie or a TV show about somebody who watches movies interesting, that is an accomplishment...
"“I was so excited about the writing, but I wasn’t really that excited about dramatising what I wrote once we were in pre-production.”
Tarantino dismissed reports that Brad Pitt would reprise his One Upon a Time... in Hollywood character Cliff Booth for The Movie Critic.
He said: “It’s a spiritual sequel to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood in so far as they take place in the same world and they take place in the same town. But there were no crossover characters. Cliff Booth was never in The Movie Critic. That’s all a bunch of bull****. That never was the case ever, ever, ever.”
The director had set The Movie Critic in California in 1977 and it was “based on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.”
While there were no plans for Brad to return as Cliff in the film, the actor will be portraying the stuntman again in Netflix's upcoming off-shoot The Adventures of Cliff Booth, which will be directed by David Fincher.
