Quentin Tarantino attends the “Elemental” screening and closing ceremony red carpet during the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 27, 2023 in Cannes, France.
Quentin Tarantino is making his opinion known on the sanctity of films once again. The 60-year-old movie director previously said he plans to retire after his 10th film. During a conversation at the Cannes Film Festival with Deadline, Tarantino reiterated that point. He said that The Movie Critic would be his last. “I like the idea of going out on top,” he said. “I like the idea of giving it my all for 30 years and then saying, ‘Okay, that’s enough.’”
Diminishing Returns Vs. The Zeitgeist
The Reservoir Dogs director added, “And I don’t like working to diminishing returns. And I mean, now is a good time because I mean, what even is a motion picture anyway anymore? Is it just something that they show on Apple? That would be diminishing returns.” Tarantino said he sees a lot of movies after they “eventually get to television,” but strongly believes films should be released in theaters first.
Using Ryan Reynolds’ partnership with Netflix as an example, the Tennessee native said, “I’m not picking on anybody, but apparently for Netflix, Ryan Reynolds has made $50 million on this movie and $50 million on that movie. I don’t know what any of those movies are. I’ve never seen them. Have you?” He added, “Well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.”
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The Movie Critic is set to begin filming in the fall. Details surrounding the upcoming film’s premise and plot remain under wraps, but according to Deadline, it is set in the late 1970s and centers around a man who wrote for a porno magazine. Speaking of which production house he will be going with, Tarantino told Deadline that he’s leaning towards Sony “because they’re the last game in town that is just absolutely, utterly, committed to the theatrical experience.”
Tarantino’s Future
He made it a point to say that Sony doesn’t care about “feeding their streaming network,” but rather, they are “committed to [the] theatrical experience,” Tarantino told the publication. “They judge success by a–es on seats. And they judge success by the movies entering the zeitgeist, not just making a big expensive movie and then putting it on your streaming platform. No one even knows it’s there.”
Though he will be done with directing, Tarantino did reveal that he was still open to storytelling in other ways. “I could do a TV show. I didn’t say I’m going to go into the night darkly. All right? [Or] I could do a TV show. I could do a short film. I could do a play. All kinds of things I could do, but I’ll probably just be more of a writer,” the Inglorious Basterds director said.