Quentin Tarantino says he’s “not in any hurry” to make one last movie before he retires or pivots to another medium because of the volatile state of the industry.
“[The business] is unrecognizable,” the writer-director said during a sit-down interview on “The Howard Stern Show.”
“I’m going to make one more movie, but the thing is I’m not in any hurry now to write a screenplay for a motion picture because what does that even mean? What is a movie today?” he continued. “Is it just content on a streaming service? Did I do everything just to do that for my last movie?”
Since “exactly what will happen with movies will remain to be seen,” the “Django Unchained” filmmaker is prepared to sit tight until he knows “what [that] is.”
His comments come as the generation of filmmakers preceding him have ramped up their criticisms of streaming’s effect on cinema. Earlier this month, Stephen Spielberg lashed out at streaming services like HBO Max for cutting down on theatrical releases following the pandemic.
“The pandemic created an opportunity for streaming platforms to raise their subscriptions to record-breaking levels and also throw some of my best filmmaker friends under the bus as their movies were unceremoniously not given theatrical releases,” Spielberg told The New York Times.
Furthermore, in a 2021 essay honoring Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese said the media industry is responsible for “the art of cinema… being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content.’”
As for Tarantino’s “retirement” plans, he’s stated his intent to stop directing movies for many years now – first saying he’d put down the camera when he turned 60 and later clarifying that he’ll stop after 10 films. (Technically, he reached that milestone with 2019’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but counts “Kill Bill” Volumes 1 and 2 as a single film.)
The director chalks it up to going out with a bang, rather than a whimper. (He’s said in the past that “Most directors’ last films are f—ing lousy.”) “That’s not gonna happen to me,” he added.
Still, a second career in television or theater isn’t out of the question: “I could do a TV show, that’s a different story. I could write or direct a play.”
Watch a video excerpt of the interview, in which Tarantino talks about superhero movies, at the top of this file.