Quentin Tarantino‘s recent — and no doubt coveted — appearance on “The Church of Tarantino,” a long-running fan podcast run by Scott K., provided spicy details about the director’s next moves. He’s working on a play he hopes to take to the West End, and during the two-hour episode, he also explained why his purported 10th film “The Movie Critic” derailed. It turns out that Tarantino’s planned limited series, as announced in 2022 for an unspecified network or streamer, began as “The Movie Critic” before he whittled it down to a feature film version.
The Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” director first announced in 2024 that he would not move forward with “The Movie Critic,” about a film writer in 1970s Los Angeles circa the same time and place as “Once Upon a Time.” There wouldn’t have been, he insists, any overlaps in terms of characters, nor would there be an appearance from Cliff Booth (played by Oscar winner Brad Pitt). Of course, we now know that Booth and Pitt are returning for a new film, scripted by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher, for Netflix. Titled “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” the period film went into on-location California production this past week.
On this week’s episode of IndieWire’s “Screen Talk,” co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio recapped Tarantino’s podcast appearance — and specifically about how Tarantino rejected the notion that he is paralyzed by fear or indecision about his 10th and expected-to-be-final movie. For now, the Netflix movie and the eventual stage play will have to sate his fans.
Elsewhere on the episode, we share our own favorite movies from the 1970s in the wake of IndieWire’s ’70s Week, which ranked the decade’s 100 best movies, topped by Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz,” along with interviews and insights about the era. Our mutual favorites include “Klute” and “Chinatown,” and we gave a shout-out to films like “A Clockwork Orange” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” that didn’t make the cut.
Speaking of podcast appearances, Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy gave a candid chat to The Black List founder Franklin Leonard about the studio’s recent successes. They talked about the bidding war for Zach Cregger’s sleeper horror “Weapons” — De Luca got the script at 8:30 a.m. on a Monday in January 2023 and by the next day the deal was closing at Warners’ production arm New Line. They also unpacked further the revolutionary deal for Ryan Coogler and “Sinners”; the filmmaker will get back the rights to the horror movie in 25 years, which is five years longer than Sony’s similar deal with Tarantino and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” a movie Warners chased. At this point, “Sinners” is a Best Picture Oscar frontrunner.
Listen to this week’s “Screen Talk” episode below.