If you’re following the new Quentin Tarantino press blitz for the “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” novelization, and you’re listening to all the various long podcasts he’s been on, outlining his future, you know the filmmaker’s schedule and timetable look a little something like this (aside from parenting, he’s a new father): promoting his current book (‘OUATIH’), finishing his criticism film book (part of the two-part book deal he made with Harper Perennial Publishing), and then directing and/or putting on a stage play that he wrote. Now, Tarantino’s never revealed what that play was until this week. On The Ringer’s The Big Picture podcast, Tarantino revealed his first play is yet another adaptation of “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” but like the novelization, it’ll not only expand upon the movie but expand upon the novelization and include even more new bits that aren’t in either medium.
“Believe it or not, no one knows this yet. I’ve written a play version of [OUATIH],'” he said, explaining that he kept writing and writing after he finished the screenplay version of ‘OUATIH,’ some of that turned into the novelization, and some of that turned into the stage play version. “I finished the script, then I wrote the play version of the story, and I purposefully made it that I didn’t put scenes that are in the play in the book. I didn’t need more material, but I wanted it to exist as a play, and I was able to explore things that are in [neither] pieces. [The play] is the one that deals with [Rick Dalton’s time] in Italy.”
“That’s the idea…the next thing on the list is to start thinking about the play,” Tarantino continued about acting mounting and putting on that stage play. “The whole second act of the play is Rick Dalton and Marvin [the agent played by Al Pacino in the film], having dinner with Sergio Corbucci [and his wife] at his favorite Japanese restaurant in Rome.”
Tarantino tied this ‘OUATIH’ franchise cottage industry expansion concept to the rest of this career and what he had hoped to do but never ultimately had the drive to accomplish. He once talked about many “Inglourious Basterds” spin-offs, the “Vincent and Vega,” spin-off of “Reservoir Dogs” and ” Pulp Fiction,” and all the ideas he had for “Kill Bill” that never came to pass. The difference this time, he noted, is he basically did most of it before he even started working on the production of ‘OUATIH,’ the other projects suffered from coming to him during the press tours of those films, but then he would run out of enthusiasm for them by the time he was done touring the world on a big press run.
“Like the entire time I was doing ‘Kill Bill,’ I originally thought I would do three Kill Bill’ movies, one every ten years,” he said, explaining his original idea. “Uma will be ten years older with each new one. And also, I’ll do an anime movie that follows this aspect of the Bride when she was with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. And then I’ll do a whole animation movie that will be the origin of Bill and his three Godfathers [Hatori Hanso, Pei Mei, and Esteban Vihaio].”
The reason they never happened? “OK, well, I fucking killed myself on ‘Kill Bill,’ went around the world, I don’t want to think about that shit anymore,” he said, laughing.
Earlier this week, Tarantino said on another podcast that he could easily envision himself writing a “Reservoir Dogs” novelization. But in this conversation, he cleared that up a little bit and said he’s already written two chapters of it. In fact, he dug up some old movie novelizations he owned, got inspired, and started writing on “Reservoir Dogs,” but realized he should probably switch to “OUATIH’ since it was still fresh in audiences’ minds.
“I thought to myself, ‘well, shit, I oughta do one of these for one of my movies,” he said, explaining the thought process. “So, my first thought was ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ and I even wrote two chapters of a ‘Reservoir Dogs’ novelization, but then I thought, ‘wait a minute, what the fuck am I doing?’ The last movie I did was [‘OUATIH’], I have tons of material that never saw the light of day, that I never even typed up, and people seemed to like it, so I thought, ‘this could do really well.’
Later on, Tarantino revealed that he’s almost done with his film criticism book and has another piece of fiction novel, which he’s already started. “A ‘Reservoir Dogs’ novel could be really cool, and then, [there’s] an original; it’s kind of pulpy, but I’ve got a Western idea, and I have written about two chapters of an original Western novel.”
He also mentions the five episodes of “Bounty Law” he wrote [the show within the movie of ‘OUAITH’], and another idea he floats without concrete details is writing a novelization of a movie he didn’t direct or come up with. “It would have to be a labor of love,” he said but didn’t have any specific ideas on what it would be.
However, the lingering thought that’s on everyone’s mind? What that tenth and final film will be and when we’ll get it. Patience will be key, though. “I’m not going to think about the next movie for a while,” he admitted.” I’m doing other things right now.” Listen to the entire podcast conversation below.