Quentin Tarantino sure knows how to keep his audience guessing. The celebrated director of the Kill Bill series has long maintained he will only make 10 films. And ever since the release of his ninth film, the critically acclaimed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in 2019, he’s been having plenty of fun dropping hints about what his 10th and final flick might be. The latest drop came on Friday night when he told Bill Maher that at one point he had considered rebooting the 1992 classic Reservoir Dogs to serve as swan song.
“I’ve actually considered making a remake of Reservoir Dogs as my last movie,” he told Maher. Then, upon realising the confession might set the internet ablaze with speculation, he added “I won’t do it, internet! But I considered it.” So it looks like for now, Tarantino fans will have to file Reservoir Dogs 2.0 under “final film considerations” right in between Kill Bill Vol. 3 and Django Unchained The Sequel. Early on, there were also rumours of a planned shared universe “epilogue-y” film that might unite all of his movies together in a single reel.
In 2017, Tarantino hinted at the idea that his films could exist in some sort of shared universe. “There's the realer than real universe, alright, and all the characters inhabit that one. But then there's this movie universe. And so From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, they all take place in this special movie universe. So basically when the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies, Kill Bill is what they go to see. From Dusk Till Dawn is what they see.”
While the list of potential options for what his final film could be keeps getting longer, Tarantino is still certain he’ll cut his movie-making career off at ten, telling Maher that he wanted to quit while he was ahead. “Working for 30 years, doing as many movies as I’ve done … That's a really long career. And I’ve given it everything I have. Every single thing I have.”
Abigail Covington is a journalist and cultural critic based in Brooklyn, New York but originally from North Carolina, whose work has appeared in Slate, The Nation, Oxford American, and Pitchfork
