Tarantino Explains Why He Scrapped “The Movie Critic” as His Final Film

Hello, I’m Maya Rivers. A wannabe poet waxing lyrical about the article, even if it doesn’t quite deserve it.

Quentin Tarantino, the director who has built a mythic career out of pulp dreams and crackling dialogue, has finally explained why he “pulled the plug” on The Movie Critic, the project once poised to be his tenth and allegedly final film. Speaking on his podcast, The Church of Tarantino, the 62-year-old filmmaker said the script and concept existed but that the project simply did not excite him enough to commit to production right now. He described the decision as “a little crazy” while insisting he can make it anytime because it is already written.

In measured, sometimes mordant tones, Tarantino unpacked the lineage of The Movie Critic. The project began as an eight-part series announced in March 2023 before being reshaped into a feature. By April 2024 it had been shelved in favor of another mystery project. Tarantino framed his original creative challenge candidly: could he transform what he called “the most boring profession in the world” into compelling cinema? The answer, for now, is not yet.

He acknowledged the awkwardness of a film titled The Movie Critic, noting that every Tarantino title carries a promise and that the idea of watching a character who primarily watches movies felt, on its face, inherently difficult to sell. He admitted the conceit was appealing as a test of craft: “If I can actually make a movie or a TV show about somebody who watches movies interesting, that is an accomplishment,” he said. But the process of pre-production and subsequent dramatization left him underwhelmed.

Tarantino also preempted and dismissed persistent rumors claiming The Movie Critic was a direct sequel to 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He clarified that any connection is spiritual rather than literal: the two stories occupy the same cinematic world and the same city, but there were no overlapping characters, and Cliff Booth never appears in The Movie Critic. He called the crossover claims “a bunch of bulls–t” and emphasized the projects were separate in intention and execution.

Details he previously shared about The Movie Critic placed the story in 1977 California and rooted it in an odd, real-world inspiration: a lesser-known man who reportedly wrote movie reviews for a pornographic periodical. Yet even that grittily specific origin could not overcome the creative echo Tarantino felt from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He admitted the technical and aesthetic challenge that made the 2019 film so satisfying—transforming modern Los Angeles into a convincing period Hollywood without depending on CGI—wasn’t an obstacle he needed to face again. With The Movie Critic he already “kinda knew” how to recreate a past L.A., and that familiarity sapped his enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, the world of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not dead: a spin-off, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, is reportedly in active development at Netflix, with Tarantino attached as writer and producer and David Fincher set to direct Brad Pitt’s iconic character. Tarantino emphasized during the podcast that he is not paralyzed by anxiety over finishing what he has called his final film and pushed back against amateur psychoanalysis of his motives. “I’m not paralyzed with fear,” he said, urging fans not to read melodrama into his process.

There is a quiet, almost poetic logic to a director known for ritual and rules deciding to step away from a project that felt like a retread. Tarantino’s confession is at once pragmatic and theatrical: the movie existed on paper, it tested him in interesting ways, but it ultimately felt too close to territory he had already explored. He left the door ajar—The Movie Critic can be made “whenever I want”—but for now he prefers to chase something new, and that restless appetite is as Tarantino as Tarantino gets.

So the reel snaps shut on one idea and the projector hums another tune; whether the filmmaker’s tenth film will arrive as a furious cabinet of curiosities or a serene coda, Tarantino insists the endgame is not panic but choice.

And so, the tale drifts on with a clipped exhale and a promise of more to come.

Sources: Celebrity Storm and New York Post, The Church of Tarantino podcast
Attribution: Andreas Rentz (Creative Commons)