Quentin Tarantino’s (potential) final movie might be a ‘70s drama about a movie critic

Quentin Tarantino has been dancing around his self-imposed 10-movie limit on his career for years, even before he released his ninth movie (Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood), but The Hollywood Reporter claims to know what his 10th—and supposedly final—movie will be called and what it might be about. According to “sources,” Tarantino has written a new original script called The Movie Critic, and he’s planning to direct it later this year. No studio is attached yet, but… it’s the 10th and possibly final movie from Quentin Tarantino, so it’s not like he’s going to be desperate for funding. Everybody will be fighting over this thing, regardless of what it is.

As for what it is, THR says its “sources” believe The Movie Critic will be “set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center,” and it may be about (or be inspired by) the story of iconic and influential film critic Pauline Kael. Part of the reasoning for that is because Warren Beatty convinced Paramount to hire Kael as a consultant in the ‘70s, so there’s all sorts of interesting showbiz stuff happening to a specific movie critic in that specific era that Tarantino could have some fun with.

That possibility seems particularly interesting given some of Tarantino’s recent comments about the movie business. In November, he questioned during an interview what a movie even is these days (“Is that something that plays on Netflix? Is that something that plays on Amazon, and people watch it on their couch?”), and he noted that he doesn’t want to become an “old man who’s out of touch” when he’s already feeling a bit like that with modern movies.

Pauline Kael going from the world of criticism to moviemaking, even if it was just for a few months in real life, could be a meta-lens that Tarantino could use to look at movies as a whole, and that definitely seems like the kind of career capper that might intrigue him.