Days after headlines indicated Quentin Tarantino was on track to reunite with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Inglorious Basterds star Brad Pitt for the legendary director’s final flick, The Movie Critic, reports are now indicating Tom Cruise is also being circled for a lead role.
According to The Insneider, it’ll all depend on the consistently packed schedule of Hollywood’s last real movie star. Though sources have noted he’s willing to adjust his commitments, the bulk of which will involve Mission: Impossible 8, for a “small role or cameo” for Tarantino’s cinematic swan song.
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This would add another great director to Tom Cruise’s professional infinity gauntlet of auteurs he’s collaborated with throughout his storied career; as well as marking the first occasion he’s reunited on-screen with Brad Pitt since 1994’s Interview With the Vampire. (Incidentally, Cruise was apparently the #1 choice for the role of Pitt’s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.)
Other major names rumoured to be stepping up for The Movie Critic include noted Tarantino collaborators Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Travolta, as well as Richard Jewell actor Paul Walter Hauser as the titular movie critic. To borrow the parlance of sports journalists: big, if true.
As for the matter of plot, the story follows an “irreverent critic in 1970s California who reviews mainstream movies for a porno magazine called The Popstar Pages.” And contrary to earlier assertions, it won’t be about The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael.
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Tarantino himself explained: “It is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.”
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [from Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic… Think about Travis’s diary entries.”
“But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his s**t was really funny. He was as rude as hell… He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.”
Tarantino’s The Movie Critic, potentially co-starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, is currently eyeing a 2025 release date.
