As he’s making the rounds for his novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, author and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has been musing about what film could be his cinematic swan song. Approaching his tenth film, which is supposedly his last, ideas like a reboot of Reservoir Dogs have popped up, with Tarantino dashing the hopes for that specific project as quickly as they were raised. However, if he were to revisit the 1992 classic that launched his directing career, Quentin Tarantino has a really cool idea on how he’d do it.
During his discussion with our ReelBlend podcast, Tarantino admitted that if he were to ever revisit Reservoir Dogs, it’d be in the form of a stage play. With theatre being one of the paths the director has considered in his retirement from cinema, it’s pretty fitting that Quentin Tarantino would be interested in reinventing the story of hard nosed criminals dealing with a heist gone wrong as a stage experience. Here’s why Reservoir Dogs represents a proper idea for a reboot, according to Tarantino himself:
I've decided if I wanted to do something like that, I would do it more on stage. I think that would be cool. It’d be a great stage play. My thought process was, ‘Well, if it's a strong piece of material, it would work doing it any time.’ It does seem timeless. And then just with a new group of actors, that would have a new life. And it would have a new life by the fact that I didn't really know what the hell I was doing when I did Reservoir Dogs. And now I know what I'm doing a little bit more. … I (also) think I was thinking at the time when I was considering doing it as a movie, making it an all black cast. That's what I think would have been my twist on it, as far as making it a different movie.
Reinvention seems to be the name of the game as of late for this storied storyteller. As Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood novelization basically represents an alternate version of the 2019 award winner, fans who’ve already committed the film to memory can enjoy the action with a fresh pair of eyes. So reinterpreting Reservoir Dogs into a stage play is just as amazing of an idea as remaking it into a film; and this reboot certainly fits the Tarantino school of thought.
Staged readings of Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue are certainly not a new prospect, as even the man himself has engaged in the medium to help further along ideas he has developed in the past. During the period of time that saw the world wondering if The Hateful Eight would ever see the light of day, a staged reading was held that dramatized the almost cancelled script. After which time, Tarantino went back to developing the story into the 2015 film that was released to the world.
Whether or not Reservoir Dogs does become reimagined as either a stage play or a film, changing the casting to be an all black or even an all female cast could be an interesting way into making this story new again. But if this is a prospect that Quentin Tarantino is going to entertain, he’ll probably wait until after that tenth and final movie is in the can. With an obsession over the quality of his metaphorical going away party, Tarantino will more than likely move on that capstone experience, if he’s even going to make a tenth film at all.
For now, Quentin Tarantino fanatics are going to have to settle on reading the man’s first novel, through the novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. You can get a copy of that very book in paperback, with a deluxe hardcover addition on the way later this year, where all fine books are sold. And don’t forget to listen to our exclusive ReelBlend interview with Quentin Tarantino, as he spilled his guts during the launch of said book in front of a sold out crowd at the New Beverly Cinema.
