Quentin Tarantino: Hollywood Film Business Has Been Dead for Years: 2019 Was the ‘Last F**king Year of Movies’

Quentin Tarantino just erected a gravestone for moviemaking. According to the auteur, it’s R.I.P. for Hollywood as a whole.

Tarantino said during the Sundance Film Festival (via Variety) that the definition of films has changed since the pandemic. The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” director deemed theatrical releases as a “show-pony exercise” before streaming.

“Well, what the fuck is a movie now? What â€" something that plays in theaters for a token release for four fucking weeks?” Tarantino said. “All right, and by the second week you can watch it on television. I didn’t get into all this for diminishing returns. I mean, it was bad enough in ’97. It was bad enough in 2019, and that was the last fucking year of movies. That was a shit deal, as far as I was concerned, the fact that it’s gotten drastically worse? And it’s a show-pony exercise. Now the theatrical release, you know, and then like yeah, in two weeks, you can watch it on this [streamer] and that one. OK. Theater? You can’t do that. It’s the final frontier.”

Instead, Tarantino is turning to the stage. After announcing that he will only make one more film to round out his directing filmography to 10, Tarantino says he is first penning a play. If it goes well, that could be what he adapts into his final feature. Unless it’s a “fiasco.”

“If you’re wondering what I’m doing right now, I’m writing a play, and it’s going to be probably the next thing I end up doing. If it’s a fiasco I probably won’t turn it into a movie. But if it’s a smash hit? It might be my last movie,” Tarantino said. “That’s a big fucking deal pulling [a play] off, and I don’t know if I can. So here we go. That’s a challenge, a genuine challenge.”

Tarantino’s decision to focus on the stage instead of the screen is also due to his family. The director has two young children based in Israel, where he primarily resides.

“I’m in no hurry to actually jump into production. I’ve been doing that for 30 years,” he said. “Next month my son turns five, and I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. When I’m in America, I’m writing. When I’m in Israel? I’m an abba, which means father. The idea of jumping on a voyage when they’re too young to understand it is not enticing to me. I kind of want to not do whatever movie I end up doing until my son is at least six. That way he’ll know what’s going on, he’ll be there, and it will be a memory for the rest of his life.”