Quentin Tarantino breaks his silence on The Movie Critic, explaining why he ended up canceling the project. For years now, Tarantino has been adamant: he will only direct 10 movies. With the Kill Bill duology counting as one, the filmmaker only has one film left to make.

After the success of 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, news emerged that The Movie Critic was taking shape as Tarantino’s final directorial effort. Plot and casting reports varied, but the film was said to follow a movie critic writing for a pornography magazine in the ’70s. Then, last year, reports emerged that Tarantino had scrapped the idea.

During a recent interview on The Church of Tarantino podcast, the director opens up about The Movie Critic and why he ended up moving away from the idea. According to Tarantino, the main reason is that it felt too similar to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Check out his comment below:

“I wasn’t really excited about dramatizing what I wrote when I was in pre-production, partly because I’m using the skillset that I learned from ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ [of] ‘How are we going to turn Los Angeles into the Hollywood of 1969 without using CGI?’

“It was something we had to pull off. We had to achieve it. It wasn’t for sure that we could do it. … ‘The Movie Critic,’ there was nothing to figure out. I already kind of knew, more or less, how to turn L.A. into an older time. It was too much like the last one.”

“The thing about ‘The Movie Critic’ is I really, really like it. But there was a challenge that I gave to myself when I did it. ‘Can I take the most boring profession in the world and make it an interesting movie?

Who wants to see a TV show about a f**king movie critic? Who wants to see a movie called ‘The Movie Critic’? That was the test. If I can actually make a movie or a TV show about someone who actually watches movies interesting, that is an accomplishment. And I think I did that.”

Tarantino then pivots to the coverage of his decision to back away from The Movie Critic, taking issue with the speculation he heard from people not in the know:

“It’s a little crazy to listen to podcasts and hear all these amateur psychiatrists psychoanalyze as if they f**king know what they’re talking about about what’s going on with me, about how I’m so scared, alright, of my 10th film.

‘Oh my god! Oh my god! I’m so fragile about my legacy. What’s going on? I’m paralyzed with fear!’ I’m not paralyzed with fear. Trust me.”

What This Means For Quentin Tarantino’s Final Movie

Rumors swirled about The Movie Critic for months, with reports that everyone from Paul Walter Hauser to Tom Cruise were being eyed to star. In a meta twist, it was at one point suggested that the film would bring back actors from throughout Tarantino’s filmography as fictional versions of themselves. It’s not clear how much of this was ever true.

It was also reported that Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth would have played a role in The Movie Critic, a claim that may have some degree of truth to it. Now, of course, Pitt is reprising his role in the upcoming The Adventures of Cliff Booth, a pseudo-sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from director David Fincher, with Tarantino having penned the script.

It’s possible that some of what was planned for The Movie Critic will end up in the upcoming Fincher movie. Regardless, though, Tarantino’s final movie is now a major question mark. The director’s latest comments, however, could be a hint about what’s to come.

Notably, Tarantino’s comments seemingly confirm that his final movie will be a departure from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and potentially his other films. This means those hoping for a Kill Bill 3 are probably out of luck. The tenth movie sounds like it will be wholly original with a distinct setting, challenging the filmmaker to do something he hasn’t done before.

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