Quentin Tarantino has always said he was only going to write and direct 10 movies.
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood was his ninth and The Movie Critic was almost his final film.
Rumoured to be about an LA-based 1970s porno mag’s film critic with Brad Pitt reprising stuntman Cliff Booth, it all looked set to start production.
But then Tarantino changed his mind and has been working on book and theatre projects until now.
The latest from Tinseltown (and this is no April Fool) is that David Fincher will now direct the Tarantino script, with Pitt starring in a Netflix spin-off sequel.
Fincher, who directed Pitt in Fight Club, Se7en and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, has made his last couple of movies (Mank, The Killer) over at Netflix. Although Hollywood can be snobby about streamers, at least they give filmmakers their budgets studios cannot commit to and sometimes even the Final Cut – Martin Scorsese’s three and half hour The Irishman anyone?
Of course, Tarantino would never let Netflix helm his final film, but he seems to have confidence in Fincher, who directed the first few episodes of House of Cards, the streamer’s first original TV series. This also isn’t the first time a Tarantino script has been helmed by another filmmaker, with Tony Scott directing 1993’s True Romance, which also featured Pitt.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, this project is not The Movie Critic, but a different story involving Booth. Pitt won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and fans were gifted more of his backstory in Tarantino’s novelisation of his 2019 movie. We’d be surprised if Leonardo DiCaprio also reprised Rick Dalton in this spin-off, but maybe he could be persuaded to do a cameo?