Don’t expect to see Quentin Tarantino behind the camera of a superhero movie anytime soon. As fun as it might be to see Captain America dropping f-bombs or Kang the Conqueror getting killed with grotesque blood splatter, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director shot down the idea of directing a Marvel Cinematic Universe film in a new interview with the L.A. Times.
“You have to be a hired hand to do those things,” Tarantino said of helming MCU movies. “I’m not a hired hand. I’m not looking for a job.”
He added that superhero movies have a “similar chokehold” on modern cinema as studio musicals once did in the ’60s.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images; Marvel Studios Quentin Tarantino has no interest in directing a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.
That’s not to say Tarantino has never considered getting involved in franchise filmmaking. For a while, he floated the idea of directing a Star Trek film. In EW’s roundtable discussion about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (which you can watch above), Tarantino said that The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith “wrote a really cool script” but “I don’t know if I’ll do it or not.” Since then, the idea has fizzled out.
After all, Tarantino has often said that he only plans on directing ten films, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was his ninth. Ending his filmmaking career with a franchise installment doesn’t seem appropriate for such an auteur.
Though there hasn’t been any news about what he does plan for his directing finale, fans of Tarantino’s work can currently enjoy his writing: His Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization came out last year, and his new book of criticism Cinema Speculation (the basis for the L.A. Times interview) is in stores now.
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