Quentin Tarantino on Why He Scrapped ‘The Movie Critic’: “Who Wants to See A Movie About A F*cking Movie Critic?”

Quentin Tarantino has long maintained that his career would end after ten films. For a time, it looked like “The Movie Critic” would be the one to close out his filmography, a “spiritual sequel” of sorts to “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” Fans were intrigued, Hollywood press ran with the idea, and then—just like that—Tarantino scrapped it. The reasons remained murky, until now.

On a recent appearance on The Church of Tarantino podcast, the director finally shed some light on why he pulled the plug. Interestingly, the project didn’t even start as a feature.

“The eight-episode series was The Movie Critic,” he revealed, explaining how he wrote it first as TV before reworking it into a film script. The problem came once pre-production began. “I knew I had done it, but I didn’t really want to do it that much,” he admitted.

Tarantino pushed back against the gossip that he’d gotten cold feet. “I’m not paralyzed with fear. Trust me, I’m not paralyzed with fear,” he said, clarifying that the issue was more conceptual. The challenge was, in his words, whether he could “take the most boring profession in the world and make it interesting.”

That profession? Being a film critic. “Every Tarantino title promises so much, except “The Movie Critic.” Who wants to see a movie about a f***ing movie critic?”

As for those persistent rumors that Cliff Booth was supposed to pop up in the story—Tarantino dismissed them outright: “That’s all a bunch of bullshit. That never was the case ever, ever, ever.”

In the end, the writing was fun, but the thought of staging it was not. “I was excited about the script, but once we hit pre-production, I wasn’t excited about dramatizing what I wrote.”

For Tarantino, it seems, a “final film” that plays it too subtle wasn’t worth making. He needs to go out with a bang.