On September 7th, Daniel Richtman was reporting that Paul Walter Hauser got an offer for the lead role in Quentin Tarantino's “The Movie Critic,” pre-strike. Jeff Sneider added to the rumors, saying that’s what he’d also heard.
What I’m being told is that it’s not true. Hauser was not offered anything. A person who has spoken to Tarantino throughout the screenwriting process says the lead “could be very surprising — more surprising than Hauser, despite being a more known name.”
Tarantino gave this person a different actor’s name; but they also said that QT likes to leak info about people he's considering just to get internet vibes and reactions, so Hauser could very well be in the mix.
When asked during this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino revealed that he wants to cast a “leading man” who is around 35 years old. He didn’t give any additional details beyond that.
However, with that being said, the rumors of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson being in “The Movie Critic” seem to be true. So we might very well be getting a “Pulp Fiction” reunion for Tarantino’s final film.
Since it’s now late September, Tarantino was supposed to be in the middle of shooting “The Movie Critic,” but the strike derailed all of that. A shoot in Los Angeles is still expected, whenever this strike ends.
Set in 1977 California, ‘The Movie Critic’ is said to revolve around a critic who writes movie reviews for a porno rag called The Popstar Pages. Tarantino described the protagonist of the film as “a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag […] He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic,” the director added.