Quentin Tarantino has long stated that he will retire from the film industry after his tenth film or his 60th birthday.
After three decades behind the camera, the 61-year-old Pulp Fiction director was set to retire with a long-awaited film called The Movie Critic.
But the long-touted film was scrapped in April 2024, before filming had even begun, after he apparently changed his mind about what his final film should look like.
Here’s everything we know about his apparent retirement.
What did Quentin Tarantino say about his retirement?
Tarantino first hinted at the film’s ending in a 2012 interview with Playboy, when he said, “I want to stop at a certain point.”
“Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the last four films are the worst in their filmography. I only care about my filmography, and one bad film ruins three good ones.
“I don’t want to have that bad, quixotic comedy in my filmography, the film where people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it was 20 years ago.’ When directors get old-fashioned, it’s not nice.”
However, in 2015, he told Yahoo that his plan was not yet set in stone.
“Yes, that’s the idea (of retiring after 10 films), I could change it at any time,” he said while promoting The Hateful Eight.
“But to be honest, I like the idea. I mean, you see, for me ten films is six years at the earliest and eight years at the latest. And besides, if the film continues as it did with The Dodo, I might not even manage ten.”
In recent years, Tarantino has expanded his activities into other areas, including writing a novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his first book of film reviews, Cinema Speculation, and in 2022 he launched a podcast with fellow director Roger Avary where they talk about cult films.
The director has also expressed interest in writing more books and producing a TV spin-off of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
In a 2021 interview with CNN, Tarantino reiterated that he did not want to lose touch with reality: “I’ve been doing this for a long time.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years now and it’s time to end the show. Like I said, I’m an entertainer. I want you to leave wanting more, you know, and not just work, and I don’t want to work with diminishing returns.
“I don’t want to become this old man who’s lost touch with reality when I already feel a bit like an old man who’s lost touch with reality when it comes to the current movies that are coming out. And that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Tarantino also spoke extensively about his future during an appearance on the Pure Cinema Podcast.
He said, “Usually their worst films are their last films. That was the case with most Golden Age directors who made their last films in the late ’60s and ’70s, and that was the case with most New Hollywood directors who made their last films in the late ’80s and ’90s.”
Tarantino also hinted that he would not make any more films after the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: “Maybe I shouldn’t make another film, because I would be really happy to drop the mic.”
“That’s the frustrating part… with a lot of really great directors, it’s like their third-to-last film was an incredibly great ending, which brings me back to what I was saying about myself.
“Or you know, if Don Siegel had stopped with Escape from Alcatraz, oh my god. What a career… he really said it all. The other two were just jobs.”
During the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino apparently reiterated his determination to quit filmmaking after his tenth film.
“I’m finishing the filmography,” he told Deadline, although he left a little leeway.
“I could do a TV show. I didn’t say I was going into the dark night, okay? I could do a TV show. I could do a short film. I could do a play. I could do all kinds of things, but I’ll probably be more of a writer.”
Quentin Tarantino’s official filmography so far
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Reservoir Dogs (1992)
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Pulp Fiction (1994)
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Jackie Brown (1997)
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Kill Bill Vol. 1&2 (2003/2004)
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Death Proof (2007)
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Inglourious Basterds (2009)
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Django Unchained (2012)
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The Hateful Eight (2015)
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
