It’s been 30 years since Quentin Tarantino made his filmmaking debut with Reservoir Dogs, and now he’s coming to the end of this portion of his professional life. Tarantino has said on numerous occasions that his 10th movie will be his last one, though it’s still unclear when this cinematic offering will arrive, let alone what it’s about. However, Tarantino did get honest about why he won’t be helming any Marvel movies or DC movies before his time as a director is finished.
While speaking with The Los Angeles Times about his new book Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarantino was asked why he’s never jumped into the Marvel and DC film pool, particularly since other auteur filmmakers have gotten in on that action. Tarantino summarized his reasoning thusly:
You have to be a hired hand to do those things. I’m not a hired hand. I’m not looking for a job.
Quentin Tarantino is certainly no stranger to directing things that are being spearheaded by other parties, as evidenced by when he directed an episode of ER in 1995 and CSI in 2005. Plus, let’s not forget that his 1997 movie Jackie Brown was based on Elmore Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch. For the most part though, Tarantino directs and writes movies from his own mind (no, he didn’t steal the idea for Django Unchained from Kanye West), and as he noted above, it’s not like he’s hurting for work. So as such, he feels no need to contribute his talents to Marvel or DC.
That’s not to say that Quentin Tarantino has never entertained the idea of making a superhero movie. In the ‘90s, he was interested in bringing Marvel’s Luke Cage to the big screen, but he ended up not moving forward with this because his idea to cast Laurence Fishburne in the role was met with resistance by some of his friends. Since then, Luke Cage has been brought to life in live-action by Mike Colter, but the superhero movies landscape looks a lot different compared to when Tarantino was kicking around the idea of making a Luke Cage movie, and now he’s uninterested in being a “hired hand” for the Marvel and DC franchises.
Interestingly enough though, there was a time where there was a possibility that Quentin Tarantino could have worked on a different major franchise: Star Trek. He’d conceived a new take on the Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action,” and The Revenant’s Mark L. Smith was tapped to write the screenplay based on Tarantino’s idea. Tarantino was seriously considering directing the movie once he was done with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he’d said that his work on Star Trek wouldn’t count as his final movie, as that’s going an original offering. In any case, by the beginning of 2020, Tarantino indicated he would not direct this Star Trek movie after all, and years later, Paramount is instead trying to get a different kind of sequel to Star Trek Beyond off the ground.
So the wait continues on learning what Quentin Tarantino’s final movie will be, though he’s said that it will not be based on his own life, akin to what Steven Spielberg is doing with The Fabelmans. Once Movie #10 is announced, we’ll let you know, but until then, keep track of next year’s dated movies with our 2023 release schedule.
