Quentin Tarantino has finished the script for what he has long promised will be his tenth and final film, and he is leaving it on the shelf for now. The director revealed the news on “The Graham Norton Show,” his first appearance on the British talk show in over a decade. “I’ve written a script that I really like,” he said. Before he touches it, he wants to stage his West End play, then go home to his family and “live a little” before deciding what comes next.
The play, “The Popinjay Cavalier,” stars Sacha Baron Cohen and opens at London’s Phoenix Theatre in March after previews in late February. It runs three months and closes June 13. Tarantino said it began as a screenplay until he saw that it “really worked as a play.” He describes it as a swashbuckling comedy with the feel of a French farce, and he predicts a thrilling night out.
Tarantino has revealed no title, story, cast or release date for the new film. Reports suggest it is a fresh project rather than “The Movie Critic,” the film he once planned and later abandoned. Industry watchers see 2028 as the earliest possible arrival, a timeline that depends on how the play lands and on whether the stage tempts him away from cinema. His family is growing as well. He has two children with his wife, Daniella Pick, and a third is on the way.
The wait is already long. His last directorial credit remains “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” from 2019, and the gap reaches seven years this year. In the meantime, he has handed another director his work. David Fincher directs “The Further Adventures of Cliff Booth,” the Brad Pitt sequel Tarantino wrote, due November 25.
Tarantino has long said ten films is the right number to leave behind. Skeptics point to directors who work well into their eighties, and his own change of plans over the years leaves the finality of that pledge open.
