Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that he will be calling it quits after completing his tenth film, which means that the legendary director will only be directing two more films.
“Drop the mic. Boom. Tell everybody. ‘Match that shit,” Tarantino said at Adobe Max, the creativity conference held at the San Diego Convention Center.
Tarantino has been hinting at his retirement since 2012. He plans on calling it quits as a director to focus on writing novels.
For those keeping score at home, Tarantino has directed eight feature films thus far—Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003-2004), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015). [NOTE: Tarantino considers Kill Bill to be one film, although it was split into two volumes for its cinematic release. He also feels that Death Proof only counts as one film despite being part of Grindhouse’s double-feature and his segment of Four Rooms (1995) doesn’t count at all. Tarantino is also not counting his very first project, an amateur film called My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987) which was never released and half of which has since been lost, towards the total.]
At the conference, Tarantino was asked how he personally defined success.
“Hopefully, the way I define success when I finish my career is that I’m considered one of the greatest film-makers that ever lived,” the 53 year old director replied. “And going further, a great artist, not just film-maker.”
He also revealed to the San Diego crowd that he is currently focusing on a historical nonfiction project. Earlier this year, Tarantino teased a potential “Bonnie and Clyde-esque” tale set in Australia in the 1930’s. He has also hinted in the past that a third installment of Kill Bill may be in the cards.
Tarantino burst into the public consciousness in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs, and went on to direct some of the most influential movies of all time. He picked up the first of his two Oscars – both for screenwriting – two years later with Pulp Fiction and grabbed headlines with his next films, Jackie Brown and Death Proof (part of an exploitation horror double feature called Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez), and Inglourious Basterds. His seventh feature film – 2012’s Django Unchained – proved to be his biggest box office hit and brought him his second Oscar.
