Though he's often suggested that he would be interested in it, Quentin Tarantino has never actually made a sequel or a prequel to any of his films. Sure, you can argue that all of the movies are set in the same universe and that technically there are two parts to Kill Bill, but same universe doesn't mean sequel and Kill Bill was made as one movie. The writer/director has often talked about a project called The Vega Brothers - which would actually be a film set before both Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs - and he has said multiple times that he is planning on making both a Kill Bill Vol. 3 and an Inglourious Basterds prequel. One of his movies that he has never talked about in that fashion, however, is Jackie Brown. It's a shame because now it looks like someone is beating him to the punch.
According to Variety, writer/director Dan Schechter is currently working on an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's The Switch, which tells the story of Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara prior to the events in Jackie Brown (which was based on Leonard's Rum Punch). While the roles were played by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro in the Tarantino movie, Schechter has brought on yasiin bey (formerly known as Mos Def) and John Hawkes to play the roles in the new movie. The book chronicles how Ordell and Louis met in prison, while both serving grand theft auto charges, and their plan to kidnap the wife of a wealthy Detroit developer. They run into a problem, however, when they find out that their mark doesn't want his spouse back. Wanting revenge, the woman teams up with Ordell and Louis to take her husband down.
I truly do not know what to think about this project. Both Hawkes and yasiin bey are talented actors, and the story sounds like a lot of fun, but Elmore Leonard adaptations have a very mixed reputation. Those that aren't made by directors like Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight), James Mangold (3:10 To Yuma) or Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty) tend not to be so great. Dan Schechter has only made one other film, 2007's Goodbye Baby, so we'll just have to wait and see if he has the goods to pull this off.
