Quentin Tarantino says the last great year for movies was 2019
There are few people who love movies more than Quentin Tarantino. The iconoclastic director has made a career out of his own love for a variety of off-kilter movies, but even he is not optimistic about the industry’s future.
“That’s a big f—ing deal, pulling [a play] off,” the director told radio host Elvis Mitchell in conversation at The Elvis Mitchell Suite presented by Darling&Co. at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.”But making movies? Well, what the f— is a movie now?”
Tarantino is currently working on a play, but still has plenty of time to sound off on the medium that made him the icon he is today.
“What? Something that plays in theaters for a token release for four f—ing weeks? All right, and by the second week you can watch it on television. I didn’t get into all this for diminishing returns,” he explained.
Tarantino went on to say that things had been rough in the movie world for some time.
“It was bad enough in ’97,” the director said, citing the year his third movie Jackie Brown was released. “It was bad enough in 2019, and that was the last f—ing year of movies. That was a s— deal, as far as I was concerned, the fact that it’s gotten drastically worse? It’s a show-pony exercise. Now the theatrical release, [and] in two weeks, you can watch it on this [streamer] and that one.”
It’s just a coincidence, perhaps, that movies ended the last time that Tarantino made one with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This is far from the first time that the director has sounded off about the state of movies, and it seems fair to say he’s not optimistic.
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