Director Quentin Tarantino wanted to bring back a number of his classic characters in what was to be his final planned film, The Movie Critic, according to reports.
The film was meant to be the director’s tenth and last film after he previously vowed to retire after making the film. However, earlier this month, Deadline Hollywood reported that sources said Tarantino had “simply changed his mind” about making The Movie Critic and that the film had now been scrapped.
Deadline‘s report also noted that Tarantino had re-written the script, and that the film’s production had been delayed due to last year’s writers’ and actors strikes.
Now, The Hollywood Reporter have claimed that one idea in the script was to bring back characters from Tarantino’s earlier films.
They report that Tarantino planned to “bring back some of the stars of his earlier work to reprise their iconic characters in ‘movie within a movie’ moments, or to play fictional versions of themselves as the actors who played those characters.” The publication say sources claimed it would have created a Tarantino “meta-verse” of sorts.
Brad Pitt had been attached to The Movie Critic as its lead actor, with rumours of other actors who had in the past worked with Tarantino also starring which would fit in with the idea of the director bringing back previous characters.
Tarantino is now seemingly focusing on an entirely new project for his final film.
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Tarantino has previously revealed that The Movie Critic would be about a real-life film journalist for a “porno rag”, who he often read growing up.
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic,” Tarantino shared previously. “I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic.
Tarantino’s retirement plans have prompted various responses from the film world. Director Christopher Nolan has characterised it as “very purist”, saying: “It’s addictive to tell stories in cinema. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s very fun. It’s something you feel driven to do, and so it’s a little hard to imagine voluntarily stopping.”
In other news, French director Luc Besson has claimed he gave Quentin Tarantino the idea to retire after 10 movies.