Quentin Tarantino made the idiotic decision to “stop” directing when he gets to his tenth film. It would be so easy for him to say “yeah, nevermind on that, I take it back.” Instead, he keeps doubling down and now he’s pulling together the cast and script for what will be his final film, The Movie Critic. There were rumors last year that Tarantino wanted Cate Blanchett for the lead, and that the film will be set in the 1970s and it will have a huge ensemble. Now I’m not so sure about any of that, because Tarantino is apparently casting Brad Pitt in a major role. Welp, now I don’t give a sh-t about this movie. From Mike Fleming Jr. at Deadline:

Quentin Tarantino will be reuniting for the third time with Brad Pitt in the director’s final film The Movie Critic. Unclear if Pitt will play the title character, but I think he is. Last time out, Pitt won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he also starred for Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds. I also think Sony Pictures will be back as the studio distributing the film, with Stacey Sher producing and a 2025 release eyed.

Tarantino has been circumspect on the last movie, but he opened up a bit to Deadline’s Baz Bamigboye at Cannes in May, when the filmmaker presided over a screening of Rolling Thunder. He said at the time the movie was set in California the year of that film’s release, which was 1977, and that it “is based on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a p—o rag.”

I’d heard Tarantino did quite a bit of rewriting since then, so we’ll see. I read his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization, and it fleshed out the story of Pitt’s character Cliff Booth, who, it turned out, was as much a cinema fan as he was a stone killer when the stuntman work dried up. If Booth went from stuntman to film critic, that would make a lot of hardcore fans happy; like many of Tarantino’s screen creations, he’s too good a character to let go of.

The pieces are still falling in place on the film, including where it will be distributed. But after the bang-up job Sony did on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, including forgoing distribution in China and supporting Tarantino’s refusal to excise the Bruce Lee bout with Cliff Booth, it isn’t too much to imagine Tarantino stays in the fold. Stay tuned.

[From Deadline]

One random thing which always stuck with me was when Pitt was doing his Oscar campaign for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and one of those “Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot” voters was raving about Pitt’s performance and how his character was the ideal bro, the dream guy every dude wanted to hang out with. All for a character who murdered his wife, and an actor who abused and terrorized his real-life wife and children on a plane just a few years beforehand. What I’m saying is that Pitt still has a lot of support in Hollywood, not just with Tarantino but with the dedicated bro club. Anyway, I guess The Movie Critic isn’t actually going to be about some Pauline Kael-type figure. Blah, what a way to go out for QT.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.