Tarantino finishes final film script, but puts it on hold for stage play

Quentin Tarantino has finished writing the script for his tenth and final cinema film.

The director gave the update on a recent episode of The Graham Norton Show, according to Variety. He has long said he will retire from feature films, meaning films made for cinemas, after his tenth.

The wait will be longer. Tarantino said he will not move forward with the new script until his stage play has closed.

That play is The Popinjay Cavalier, a swashbuckling comedy and his first-ever stage play. It stars Sacha Baron Cohen and will run for three months at the Phoenix Theatre in London, on the West End, the city’s main theatre district.

Previews begin in late February, with the official opening next March. The run is set to close on 13 June.

Tarantino said the play began life as a screenplay before he realised it worked better on stage. He will write and direct the production, according to IndieWire and The New York Times.

He told Norton he wants to focus on the play, spend time with his family and “live a little” before deciding what to do next with the film script.

His most recent cinema release remains Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, released in 2019. He had previously lined up a project titled The Movie Critic as his tenth film, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

For fans, this means two premieres to watch instead of one. First comes a three-month stage run in London. Then, at some point after June, Tarantino will decide how, and when, to return to the film script sitting in his drawer.