The film world is waiting with bated breath to hear details about Quentin Tarantino’s tenth and final film, The Movie Critic. It was reported earlier that just prior to the SAG-AFTRA strikes, Tarantino had offered the lead role to Paul Walter Hauser from such films as Richard Jewell and I, Tonya. It was also recently said that the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director had secured a generous tax credit from the state of California with $20 million for his swan song.
Total Film is now reporting that Tarantino, who is keen on working with his past actors, will be reuniting with his Pulp Fiction star, John Travolta, on The Movie Critic. The Ankler’s Jeff Sneider broke the story on social media with a tweet that reads, “I hear Tarantino is saving a role in his final film THE MOVIE CRITIC for two of his former leading men. Here’s one of them…” posted along with a popular meme gif of Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction looking around confused. The news is an exciting development for fans, as Tarantino famously revived Travolta’s career after a series of his films in the 80s had underperformed.
After Sneider’s tweet, people would excitedly respond with questions about Samuel L. Jackson’s involvement with Tarantino’s last film. Sneider replied, “He was already kinda out there. I’ve heard of another one… and an actress too.” This could lead to many assumptions of Tarantino alums, including Uma Thurman, Daryl Hannah, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, etc., etc.
Tarantino had revealed to Deadline that The Movie Critic is set in 1977 California and “is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.” Tarantino became aware of these reviews when he was a teenager and had a job loading porn magazines into a vending machine. “All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page. 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 DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver) might be if he were a film critic.”