All eyes are on Quentin Tarantino’s next film, because he claims it’s going to be his final film. The director of Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and the recent Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood has proclaimed that he’d like to have 10 films on his resume -- no more, no less. And while Hollywood plays as the quintessential version of Tarantino movie, he definitely says that he has one more movie in him before he transitions to plays and books.
So when Quentin Tarantino recently returned as a guest on CinemaBlend’s official podcast, ReelBlend, we asked him a bold question. Since the director is known for numbering his films, including title cards that claim to be “The Fifth Film by Quentin Tarantino” in his opening credits, we asked if his next film will actually say, “The Last Film by Quentin Tarantino.” And he told us:
That's my plan. That's my plan, is for it to say, ‘The Last Film by Quentin Tarantino.' At least in the trailer, but I think probably in the movie, yeah. I've thought about that. I never miss an opportunity to mythologize myself.
So there you go. While Tarantino went on to tell us that he has absolutely no idea what his final film will be about, he at least knows that this movie will include a title card declaring that it’s the “Last” film by the director, and not “The Tenth Film.” That would give Tarantino an out, so he could just continue numbering the movies if he chose to come out of retirement and keeping making movies. But this bold stamp puts an exclamation point on his incredible career.
As we said, Quentin Tarantino told us that he hasn’t come up with the idea of what his final film will be, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t share at least a few details about his thought process on it. For example, when discussing the impact because he knows this film will be his last, Tarantino explained to ReelBlend:
Well, it'll stop it from being something frivolous, you know? It'll stop me from going, ‘Hey, that's a good book. Why not do that?’ … Now would be the time in the career where I would do that good book, just because it would make a good movie. If I would like to be on a normal trajectory, I’d go, ‘Well, okay, I got three more movies. I have four more movies.' Whatever the time is. I don't even know if I have one more movie. That's the way life is. We've just learned that this year. But so, that nips all those ideas in the bud. It’ll 99% be an original. I could change my mind on this. I could absolutely change my mind on this. But I don't see me trying to ‘out epic’ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I kind of like the idea… I could change my mind, but I kind of like the idea of that being like the last big epic, and the last (movie) kind of being more of an autumnal epilogue. The epilogue at the end of a big book.
I’m getting sad just thinking about it. In a way, I’m happy that Quentin Tarantino recognizes Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is a very, very difficult film to top. And if he’d prefer to ride off into the sunset on what he’s referring to as an “Epilogue” film, that’s actually brilliant.
We will have the full ReelBlend interview with Tarantino posted the week of July 4, so be on the lookout for that. And if you haven’t yet picked up a copy of his new book, a novelization of the Hollywood story, it’s available now wherever books are sold.
