Tarantino Regrets Not Directing ‘The Outfit’ with De Niro, Keitel, and Grier, After ‘Jackie Brown

There are lots of what ifs in Quentin Tarantino’s career, unrealized projects that could have been made, but didn’t. The most famous ones include “Kill Bill: Volume 3,” “Django/Zorro,” “The Vega Brothers,” and of course, his R-rated ‘Star Trek’ movie.

Tarantino famously took six years off between “Jackie Brown” and “Kill Bill,” a stretch long enough that any new film would have had to land squarely in that gap. He left the spotlight only to return in 2003, reinventing himself in the process, with “Kill Bill: Volume One.”

In a recent interview, he reflected on that hiatus, calling it “an especially long time,” and admitted that the break came because he “became too famous.” Looking back, he has regrets, revealing that he even knew exactly what movie he would have made if he hadn’t stepped away.

“At that time, I was thinking of doing my adaptation of The Outfit,” he says, “with Robert De Niro as Parker, Harvey Keitel as his partner, and Pam Grier playing the girl. And there’s a part of me that wishes, now that they’re older and can’t do it, there’s a part of me that really wishes I could have done that.”

Tarantino was drawn to the Richard Stark Parker novels—the same source behind “Point Blank”—and his target was the third book, “The Outfit,”. which ties into the first two installments and forms a connected trilogy.

Of course, “The Outfit” had already been made once, in a 1973 adaptation directed by John Flynn. That version stars Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, and Karen Black, and follows Earl Macklin, a professional Chicago hitman, as he navigates a deadly web of mob politics and betrayal. After a heist goes wrong, Macklin discovers his crew has been compromised and must track down the informant while protecting himself and his remaining allies.

The film is a taut, low-key crime thriller, emphasizing strategy, loyalty, and the quiet tension of underworld power struggles rather than flashy violence—a ‘70s gem that’s easily one of the most underrated “New Hollywood” movies from that decade.

For Tarantino, though, this was the project that got away, and one of the many unrealized films that linger in his imagination as his tenth and final film inches closer.