Quentin Tarantino has finished the script for his planned tenth and final film, but he is not ready to turn it into his next movie before getting some time to himself first. For a director who has treated that number like a cinematic finish line, the update is both encouraging and maddening. He shared the news on The Graham Norton Show while promoting a project that has temporarily pulled him away from Hollywood’s most familiar chair.

Tarantino has made ten feel like a cinematic countdown, but, as he says, his final chapter can wait until he knows what comes next.

Quentin Tarantino's tenth cinematic release has garnered an audience of its own, even before its mere outline has crossed the threshold of his office. He has said he will stop directing after his tenth, making every new project feel like a potential farewell. To add a little more fuel to the fire, Tarantino revealed during his recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show that the script to said tenth film is, in fact, complete. But the filmmaker has his reservations about the right time to get on with it. 

“I’ve written a script that I could do, that I really really like, but I have to do the play and see who I am," the Pulp Fiction maker said.

"I'll finish the play, and then I’ll go back and be with my family for a while and then live, and then see what that guy wants to do,” Tarantino told Graham Norton upon being asked about it. 

His previous attempt at a farewell, The Movie Critic, was abandoned in 2024. Unlike the script he told Norton about, The Movie Critic was almost ready for production. Set in 1977, it had Brad Pitt attached to star. But then, despite the $20 million state tax incentive the film managed to acquire, Tarantino ultimately lost interest during pre-production, explaining later that recreating an older Los Angeles felt repetitive after One Upon a Time in Hollywood, among other reasons. 

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For now, Tarantino’s attention is on a different stage, the West End, to be precise. 

Quentin Tarantino is writing and directing The Popinjay Cavalier, a swashbuckling comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen. He told Norton the project began as a screenplay before he realized it worked better as a play, and he is keeping its story under wraps.

Previews begin at London’s Phoenix Theatre on February 23, 2027, ahead of its March 18 opening. The run is scheduled to close in June, giving Tarantino a commitment before he steps back to reassess his next move.

Until then, Tarantino's writing will reach screens through The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follow-up directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt. And as per his wishes to be free of the director's designation for once, writing for another director is quite different from returning to the chair himself. For now,  Tarantino has a script; whether he will make it remains open.

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What are your thoughts about Quentin Tarantino's tenth being his final film? Let us know in the comments.