If The Movie Critic is truly Quentin Tarantino’s final movie, you just know he’s going to fill it with all of his friends. And that will make for some exciting casting news, like today’s, as Deadline reports Brad Pitt will rejoin his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director on the project.
It’s unclear if Pitt has the title role, that of a film critic who wrote for pornographic magazines in the 1970s. But it sure seems like Pitt would be a right fit for it. While Tarantino originally sought a white guy in his 30s, we’re talking about Brad Pitt here, and he’s pretty much ageless. It’s possible that the lead role is based on film critic and porn historian William Mangold, a Tarantino favorite.
This will be Pitt and Tarantino’s third time working together. Pitt won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as stunt double Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He also starred in Tarantino’s war film Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino has talked a little bit about The Movie Critic and it sounds deeply personal, as it should be for his final film. It’s set in 1977 California, the same year as Rolling Thunder, and was inspired by a job Tarantino had loading porn magazines into the racks. He would read the second-string film critic in one of those mags, calling him “a guy who really lived but was never really famous.”
Expect Tarantino to do some revising of film history, as well, which could be interesting to see.