That’s not a bingo.
Quentin Tarantino is scrapping plans to make “The Movie Critic” his next film and will start all over on his 10th and final project.
The legendary director previously said “Critic” would be his last movie, and it was expected to start filming this year.
Reports that Tarantino is dumping the project come after he worked on it for months and announced that his frequent collaborator Brad Pitt would have a central role.
The project was going to shoot for one day in August to qualify for a $20.5 million California Tax Credit before beginning production in earnest in early 2025. That is now no longer on the table.
Tarantino previously said the movie idea was inspired by a real-life film journalist who worked for a “porno rag” that the auteur grew up reading.
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic,” Tarantino told Deadline last May without naming his odd muse.
“I think he was a very good critic. 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. Think about Travis’ diary entries.”
Tarantino said he stumbled upon the critic as a teen while working a job in which he had to load porn magazines into a vending machine.
“All the other stuff was too skanky to read, but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page,” he was quoted as saying.
Tarantino has been adamant about retiring from Hollywood before he loses a step as a filmmaker.
During a 2012 interview with Playboy, he said, “I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end.
“I am all about my filmography, and one bad film f—s up three good ones. I don’t want that bad, out-of-touch comedy in my filmography, the movie that makes people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it’s 20 years ago.’ When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty.”