"I've written a script that I really like," Tarantino says
The director has long said he will stop after ten features. He now says the script for number ten exists and that he will first do a play, spend time with his family and "live a little."
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Oct 18, 06:00 UTC ·
811 words
Quentin Tarantino says he has written a script he likes for his tenth film, the one he has long said will be his last, and that he is not rushing to make it. [1]
The news is a change in what is known. Until now the finale was a number, a promise to stop at ten. It is now also a document that exists.
But a finished screenplay is not a production, and no production, schedule or commitment to make the film has been announced. [1] The story is still developing, and everything below rests on Tarantino's own account of it.
What he said
Tarantino made the remarks on The Graham Norton Show, where he appeared alongside Ellen DeGeneres, Colin Farrell and Gemma Chan, according to Variety. [1]
"I've written a script that I really like," he said of his tenth film. [1]
Then came the pause. On the show he said he wants to do his play first, then spend time with his family, "live a little" and decide what he wants to do. [1] He did not announce when, or whether, he would begin making the film. [1]
The ceiling he built himself
Variety describes the tenth film as his planned final feature, and reports that Tarantino has long said he intends to stop making features after ten. [1] His most recent released film is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, from 2019. [1] That is seven years ago now, a long gap for a director whose releases have been events.
The script therefore carries an odd weight. Most directors do not know which film will be their last, and the knowledge usually arrives late, from illness, money or the market. Tarantino named his ending years ahead.
A last film chosen in advance carries a pressure that an ordinary next project does not. It has to be the one that makes sense of the other nine.
Which may be why he is not hurrying. A man who has promised himself a final act can be forgiven for wanting to see something of the world before he stages it. "Live a little" is a striking phrase from someone whose life has been films. It reads as an admission that the work and the life have been competing for the same hours, and that for now he is picking the life.
That is this paper's reading, not a claim from Tarantino. He gave no reason for the wait beyond what he listed. But his own words leave the decision open, and the pause has no announced end date. A script on a shelf is a possibility, not a schedule.
The play comes first
The stage work he named is The Popinjay Cavalier, starring Sacha Baron Cohen. It is due to open at London's Phoenix Theatre in March, after previews in late February, and to close on June 13 after a three-month run. [1]
Tarantino said the piece began as a screenplay before he decided it worked as a play. [1] That detail matters. It shows he is willing to let a story written for the screen end up somewhere else. Nothing in what he said suggests the tenth script will go the same way. He called it his tenth film, and that is how it stands.
It does show how he is spending the gap. The last stretch before a self-imposed final chapter is going to a different medium, in front of a live audience, where a bad night cannot be re-cut. For a director famous for control of every frame, that is a real change of pace.
What it means for the legacy
The pause cuts two ways. A film that is written but unmade is safe from disappointment, and the legend of the last Tarantino picture can keep growing while it waits. Yet the longer it waits, the more every other thing he does is read as a prelude to it, or a substitute for it.
It also changes how the retirement talk should be heard. A stunt does not need a screenplay behind it. A person who has written the thing and then chosen to set it down for family and a stage run is behaving more like someone deciding how to end a body of work than like someone teasing the press.
No other details of the film have been reported so far. Nothing has been said about its subject, its cast or who would back it.
The play's closing date is the first real marker. Once the run ends on June 13, the questions he has set aside come back to him: whether the family time and the stage work were enough, and whether the finished script still looks like the last word he wants to say.
For a filmmaker who has spent decades building anticipation, this may be his most Tarantino move yet. He has written the ending, and he has decided it can wait.
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