Quentin Tarantino Leaves the Door Open for a Rated-R Star Trek Movie or Kill Bill Sequel After Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

For years, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has been announcing his own retirement from directing after making his 10th movie, which would mean that his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, would be his last time at the helm. However, while doing press for Hollywood, Tarantino revealed on the CinemaBlend podcast that, to him, it is only his 9th movie because he considers Kill Bill Vol. 1 & Vol 2. to be one very long movie, and not two, as it was released.

Frankly, the truth of the matter is, I don’t think it would’ve been as popular as a four hour movie. I literally had a guy say that to me. It was one of those weird diamond bullet moments where you can’t unhear it. He said, ‘Quentin, here’s the thing. My uncle would love this movie, but he wouldn’t love it at four hours.’

This means that there’s still one more film to be made and it could be the controversial Rated-R Star Trek movie that Tarantino first mentioned a couple years ago. The movie is still on his mind, as he recently told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he is “intrigued by the J.J. Abrams version” because the actors don’t just play characters, but play other actors playing those characters.

[Chris Pine‘s] not just another guy, he’s William Shatner’s Capt. Kirk. And it’s literally, Zachary Quinto is literally Leonard Nimoy’s — because they both have the same scene together — he’s his Spock. They f–king nail it. They just nail it.

However, Tarantino doesn’t like the fact that Pine’s Kirk exists in a new timeline where many of the classic stories haven’t or will never have happened.

I want the whole series to have happened, it just hasn’t happened yet. No, Benedict Cumberbatch or whatever his name is, is not Khan. Khan is Khan. I told J.J., ‘I don’t understand this, I don’t like it.’ And he went: ‘Ignore it! Nobody likes it! I don’t understand it. Do whatever you want. If you want it to happen in the exact way it happened on the series, it can.’

Tarantino also volleyed the possibility of a sequel to Kill Bill being his next and last movie.

Me and Uma (Thurman) have talked about it recently, frankly, to tell you the truth. I have thought about it a little further. We were talking about it literally last week. If any of my movies were going to spring from my other movies, it would be a third ‘Kill Bill.’

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opens in theaters on July 26th. The cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Margot Robbie, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, Margaret Qualley, Damian Lewis, Bruce Dern, Emile Hirsch and Mike Moh.