With The Hateful Eight on the cusp of release, Quentin Tarantino is now looking to the future. According to his past comments, that includes a mere two movies. His intentions are to retire at the age of 60 while he’s still at the top of his game, leaving his audience hungry for more.
Those two aforementioned films are of great interest to his subset of fans, particularly the second one. It’s been well-documented that Tarantino plans to issue a third Western after The Hateful Eight, leaving his final movie a little bit of a mystery. Luckily, the verbose filmmaker is seldom shy when it comes to discussing what’s next on his slate, and during press rounds for his latest effort, Tarantino let loose some ideas for that couplet of pics.
First up is the Western, which he told folks at The Playlist is likely to be inspired by one of his long-time favorite scribes: Elmore Leonard. His novel Forty Lashes Less One – which he’s mentioned previously – is still in consideration:
“The third Western could actually be a TV thing. I’ve owned the rights for a while — I get them and I lose them and then I get them — this piece which I think really demands that I make it which is Elmore Leonard book called Forty Lashes Less One. I actually think if you’re going to call yourself a Western director today you need to do at least three [films]. And I would really like to do [the Leonard book] as a mini-series, like an hour an episode, four or five hours, I’d write and direct it all. And it’s right along the lines of Django Unchained and Hateful Eight as it deals with race and it all takes place in a territorial prison and it’s a really good book and I’ve always wanted to tell that story, so we’ll see. I’m hoping I’ll do that eventually.”
Whether a “TV thing” counts toward his remaining movie quota is uncertain. Another project on the table is his potential spinoff/sequel to Inglourious Basterds entitled Killer Crow. Created from the massive subplots he edited out of the finished movie, he’s said in the past that it’s a no go. He’s now backtracked on that statement, telling the site, “who knows, I could still [make] that”:
“The thing is, the huge stuff that I took out could make its own movie and it followed a platoon of black troops that were court-martialed and they escape. They were in France, they were going to be hung and in London and their whole thing was to get to Switzerland. And they ended up getting into an adventure and they meet the Basterds, so I ended up taking all that out. So I could still do that. That’s the closest thing…I’m not done with it. It’s the closest thing that I have which is a big piece of material that hasn’t been done before. And I would still need to end it and relook at the whole thing again, but that could happen.”
Another historical dip seems to be the way Tarantino plans to end his filmmaking career. If he doesn’t develop Killer Crow, he also references plans to do a period gangster flick.
“It would be fun to do a ‘30s gangster movie, like Bonnie And Clyde or Dillinger, with the tommy guns and that kind of thing. That’s something I haven’t done and that would be cool,” he said.
With that many options up in the air, it’ll be interesting to see which one he picks. Suspiciously absent from the conversation is Kill Bill 3, though he’s talked about returning to that world on more than one occasion and even has a storyline plotted out. Plus, there’s also his hopes of tackling a sci-fi project. Might Tarantino go back on his word to fulfil all of these ambitions? We can only hope.