For more than a year, Quentin Tarantino has been writing and working on what he says will be his tenth and final film. It was supposed to be The Movie Critic. At first, people thought it would be about a Pauline Kael-type figure with a female lead. Then Quentin cast Brad Pitt in the lead role and I promptly lost interest in all of it. Apparently, Tarantino did as well – he’s “changed his mind” about the whole project and now he’s going to work on something else for his “final movie.”

Quentin Tarantino’s movies are always full of surprises, and here is one about The Movie Critic we did not expect. Deadline can reveal that Tarantino has dropped the film as his 10th and final project. He simply changed his mind, Deadline has been told.

Tarantino was going to have Brad Pitt as the principal star, which would have marked their third teaming after Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There were rumors that many from the casts of his past films might take part, and Sony was preparing to make the film after doing such a superb job on the last one.

Word is that Tarantino had rewritten his script, which delayed the start of production. But this is his 10th and final film, and Tarantino simply decided The Movie Critic will not be it.

This is the biggest surprise to Tarantino fans since years back when Deadline revealed he had shelved The Hateful Eight after he gave a small group of actors his script and one of them shared it with their rep. Soon it had been copied and the rough draft was shared all over town and online. Tarantino felt betrayed, but he eventually returned to the project after staging a reading for charity and drawing raves for it.

As for The Movie Critic, originally planned to be his 10th and final film, Tarantino has simply had a change of heart and Deadline hears he will not be moving forward with the project. Sources close to the director said he changed his mind and is going back to the drawing board to figure out what that final movie will be.

[From Deadline]

Re: The Hateful Eight, Samuel L. Jackson always took credit for convincing QT to make it, because Sam loved his role so much. If Sam had been offered the lead in The Movie Critic, I’m sure Sam would have been able to talk QT into doing it. I do wonder if casting Pitt as the lead was part of the problem, but I have no evidence of that beyond “vibes.”

As for the whole “tenth and final film” – as many other people have pointed out, Tarantino just has this dumb hang-up where he can’t just say “you know what, I changed my mind, I’m going to leave myself open to still writing and directing beyond my tenth film.” So many directors are making their best or most interesting films in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Marty Scorsese is still busy as a beaver at 81 years old. Steven Spielberg waited until his 70s to make The Fabelmans, which was honestly his best film in a decade. Michael Mann and Ridley Scott are still master craftsmen with weird taste and fascinating visions. QT says he wants to retire from directing to focus more on writing and his young family, and I get that. But I also think he refuses to just admit that he’s changed his mind as he gets older.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.