Quentin Tarantino is prepping his final film The Movie Critic

Quentin Tarantino has long said his next film will be his last, and now that film is moving forward, entitled The Movie Critic.

The 59-year-old filmmaker is currently putting together the project, with plans to start production sometime this fall, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The story is said to be set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female character at the center, though no further plot details were revealed.

While not confirmed, there is speculation that the story may be centered on iconic film critic, essayist and novelist Pauline Kael, who Tarantino has long admired.

In fact, the second book Tarantino published last year, Cinema Speculation, was inspired by the work of Kael, who passed in 2001 at the age of 82.

The THR report also speculates that Tarantino’s final film may coincide with Kael’s brief tenure working as a consultant to Paramount Pictures in 1979, accepting an offer made by Warren Beatty.

She was first brought on to work as a consultant on James Toback’s 1982 film Love and Money, though her time at the studio only lasted a few months before she returned to writing film reviews for The New Yorker.

Still, there is no confirmation The Movie Critic is inspired by or based on Kael’s time as a Paramount consultant, though the timeline of the movie and her Paramount gig do seem to match up.

As with most of Tarantino’s recent projects, there is no studio home in place yet, though sources claim the project could go out to buyers this week.

Sony is considered a front-runner for the project, not only because the studio distributed his last film, 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but because they also gave Tarantino a unique deal where the copyright to the film reverts back to him after a certain period of time.

That deal put Tarantino in an elite group of filmmakers who film rights reverted back to them, including George Lucas, Mel Gibson, Peter Jackson and Richard Linklater.

Sources claimed in 2019, just before Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hit theaters, that the copyright ownership reverts back to Tarantino after 30 years, though others claimed it was 20 years or even 10 years.

The copyright ownership was the sticking point for Warner Bros., the other studio bidding for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood back in 2017, with a source claiming that Warner Bros. wouldn’t do that, ‘because then they would have to give Christopher Nolan that same deal.’ 

Deal: The THR report also speculates that Tarantino’s final film may coincide with Kael’s brief tenure working as a consultant to Paramount Pictures in 1979, accepting an offer made by Warren Beatty