On his The Ringer podcast, Sean Fennessey continued the denials that Quentin Tarantino’s next film is what had been reported by THR earlier in the week.
Fennessey knows Tarantino, so I assume his intel on the film is accurate. This also dampens all the conversations that have happened over the week about who could possibly be playing Pauline Kael:
There was a news report in The Hollywood Reporter that Quentin Tarantino’s tenth and final film, which I guess is being called The Movie Critic, is forthcoming and that there is a script. All I can say about that is that I know some stuff about it and I’m not allowed to say anything about it… Based on what I know, I don’t think all the reporting is accurate. That’s what I’ll say… It sounds like a very important project and I’m sure we’ll talk about it a lot more in the future.
As suspected, a new Tarantino is indeed coming, but maybe not the one being described by THR‘s Borys Kit. I’m guessing the part that is false is the Kael connection. It might still be called “The Movie Critic,” but it’s not necessarily about Kael.
In the report, Kit specifically stated that “Logline details are being kept in a suitcase but sources describe the story as being set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center”.
The problem is that he then went on to speculate, in great detail, why it could be about Pauline Kael, given the title and Tarantino’s real admiration of the late great film critic. I guess Kit should have never written that part in the first place.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.