Quentin Tarantino has written the script for his tenth and, he insists, final movie. The director confirmed the news on The Graham Norton Show, but there is a catch for fans: he is in no hurry to shoot it. A West End play comes first, then family time, and only then the film that would close out one of the most famous self-imposed career limits in Hollywood.
What did Tarantino actually say about his 10th movie?
Appearing as a guest on The Graham Norton Show, Tarantino revealed, “I’ve written a script that I really like,” per Far Out Magazine’s report on the interview. But he is deliberately shelving it. His West End play, The Popinjay Cavalier, starring Sacha Baron Cohen (who also has Ali G: Who Iz I? opening in theaters this Friday), opens in March, and that production has his full attention first. “I want to do the play and see who I am, then I’ll go back and spend time with my family and live a little and then see what I want to do,” he said. He gave no title, no cast, and no start date for the film.
When will Tarantino’s final film come out?
There is no release date, and honest math suggests a long wait. The sequence Tarantino laid out is: stage the play (opens March), step back, live with his family, then decide. His wife Daniella Pick is expecting their third child, which he has repeatedly said factors into his pace. Add a typical Tarantino pre-production and shoot, and nothing about his comments points to cameras rolling soon. Any specific date you see attached to this project right now is speculation, not reporting.
The 10-movie rule, and how the count works
Tarantino has said for years that he will stop at ten films, arguing directors rarely get better with age. By his own counting, where Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 count as one movie, his filmography stands at nine: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003-04), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). The next one he directs would be the tenth.
Whatever happened to The Movie Critic?
The Movie Critic was announced as his tenth film with Brad Pitt rumored to star, then Tarantino scrapped it in April 2024. He finally explained why on The Church of Tarantino podcast last year, as ComingSoon reported: he had originally written it as an eight-episode TV show, rewrote it as a movie, then realized in pre-production that he “wasn’t really that excited about dramatizing” it, because turning Los Angeles into 1977 was a trick he had already pulled off for 1969. It was, he said, “too much like the last one.” He also shot down the persistent rumor that Cliff Booth appeared in the script: “That was never the case, ever ever ever.”
The road to film number ten: timeline
- 2019: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his ninth film, releases to strong box office and 10 Oscar nominations.
- 2023: The Movie Critic reported as his final film, with production eyed for the following year.
- April 2024: Tarantino abandons The Movie Critic, leaving his tenth film an open question.
- August 2025: On The Church of Tarantino podcast, he explains the scrapping and confirms Cliff Booth was never in it.
- October 2026: On The Graham Norton Show, he confirms a finished tenth script exists, but says the West End play The Popinjay Cavalier (starring Sacha Baron Cohen, opening March) comes first, then family time.
- Later this year: The Adventures of Cliff Booth, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spin-off Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed, arrives on Netflix with Brad Pitt returning.
What this means for fans
Adjust expectations: treat the tenth film as a late-decade event at the earliest, not a 2026 or quick-turnaround release. The real near-term Tarantino fix is The Adventures of Cliff Booth on Netflix later this year, the first time he has written a film for another director since From Dusk Till Dawn. If you are in London, The Popinjay Cavalier opens in March and, per Tarantino, started life as a screenplay with a swashbuckling, French-farce flavor, so it is the closest thing to a new Tarantino story you can actually buy a ticket for. And if the retirement rule holds, every detail that trickles out about this script from here on is worth tracking, because it is the last one.
Our analysis: the slowest farewell in Hollywood just got slower
Tarantino has now spent more time talking about his tenth film than he spent making some of his actual films, and the Graham Norton appearance fits a clear pattern: he protects the mystique of the finale by deferring it. Scrapping The Movie Critic because it felt too easy tells you the bar he has set for the closer; it has to scare him a little. The Popinjay Cavalier detour is more revealing still. A stage play is a low-stakes laboratory for a filmmaker who has always written dialogue-first, and his line “do the play and see who I am” reads like a director genuinely undecided about what the last chapter should be, not one hiding a finished plan. The Cliff Booth handoff to Fincher, a director famous for precision where Tarantino is famous for instinct, is the fascinating wildcard: if that film lands, it quietly proves Tarantino’s universe can outlive his own filmography, which makes the pressure on number ten even stranger. For now, the most honest headline is the simplest one: the script exists, the movie does not, and Tarantino likes it that way.
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