Quentin Tarantino, known for cult films like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Volume 2, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight, has time and again said that he will retire from filmmaking after 10 films. His ninth feature film was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio. The movie was released in 2019. (Also Read: Brad Pitt no longer to star in Quentin Tarantino’s final film, The Movie Critic because….)

His 10th and final film was supposed to be The Movie Critic, but multiple reports suggested last week that the film has now been shelved. Here are 5 exciting things to know about the now-scrapped film.

The subject

Quentin had spelled out the synopsis of The Movie Critic to centre around a “porno rag” journalist, inspired by a real-life person Quentin grew up reading. “He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. 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 (Robert De Niro’s Taxi Driver character) might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries,” he said.

The cast

There were rumours that Brad Pitt would be reprising his Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood character Cliff Booth, a stunt man who in Tarantino’s novelisation of the feature, was a big movie buff. However, the filmmaker never confirmed it. A new Hollywood Reporter story suggests even Tom Cruise was considered for the role, since he was the original choice for Cliff, but couldn’t take it up because of scheduling issues.

The multiverse

The THR report suggests that Quentin was planning a multiverse of sorts with this film. “The Hollywood-set tale could serve as a Tarantino goodbye meta-verse with the director’s earlier movies existing in the same era of The Movie Critic (which could work, given that his films have a ’70s vibe). That way, Tarantino could bring back some of the stars of his earlier work to reprise their iconic characters in ‘movie within a movie’ moments, or to play fictional versions of themselves as the actors who played those characters.” Among the actors he was in talks for returning were John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained), and Margot Robbie (Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood).

Olivia Wilde as Pauline Kael

The same report claims that Quentin met actor-filmmaker Olivia Wilde. While the agenda of the meeting wasn’t clear, a source confirmed that there was a key role of a female film critic in the movie, based on Pauline Kael.

Well, The Movie Critic was surely shaping up in an interesting way, going by the above details. But now that Quentin Tarantino has pivoted, it’d be fascinating to see what he chooses as his final directorial.