Kill Bill fans might want to put a call out to Hatori Hanzo, ’cause The Bride could have another killing spree ahead of her.
At least that’s the latest word to break in the ongoing “what’s next for Quentin Tarantino?” news cycle. As is typically the case, that news also came straight from the director’s mouth, with Tarantino letting the bombshell of a nugget slip in a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast.
Speaking with Happy Sad host Josh Horowitz, the infamously verbose Tarantino teased The Bride’s possible return when he mentioned he’d recently talked about a new entry in the series with Kill Bill star-slash-muse Uma Thurman.
Though Tarantino was on the podcast to promote the release of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, he was happy as ever to discuss some of the projects he may or may not tackle in the future, teasing of his and Thurman’s potential return to the Kill Bill series by saying, “Me and Uma 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 to spring from my other movies, it would be a third Kill Bill.”
Of course, it remains to be seen whether or not a new Kill Bill movie could ever happen, if only because Tarantino may not be able to fit it into his “direct 10 movies and then retire” career plan. That plan has been widely covered in the news cycle of late, as the soon-to-be-released Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is being billed as, “The 9th Film From Quentin Tarantino.” Fans of the director’s work are quick to note that he’s in heavy talks to direct a secretive, Pulp Fiction-styled (and very R-rated) Star Trek movie, which would, in fact, be his 10th movie in the director’s chair.
Still, the director noted recently that a possible “loophole” in his 10-movie arc might make it possible for his directorial career to extend beyond that Star Trek flick. The loophole, you ask? That his final movie should be a Tarantino original. Though he circled back to his 10-film plan almost in the same breath, “I actually think, if I was going to do Star Trek, I should commit to it. It’s my last movie. There should be nothing left-handed about it. I don’t know if I’m going to do that, but that might happen.”
So yeah, Quentin Tarantino really is the only person on Earth who knows what Quentin Tarantino is going to do next, and even he seems a bit in the dark on the subject.
That being said, we can absolutely agree that if there’s a single storyline in Tarantino’s bloody oeuvre that’s more than open to a follow-up, it’s the vengeance-fueled one at the center of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. In particular, there’s the open wound of The Bride’s brutal dispatching of one of her Deadly Viper Assassination Squad foes (Vivica A. Fox’s Vernita Green) in full view of the woman’s young daughter, Nikki. If you remember, after the kill, Thurman’s character looks the shocked young girl in the eye and tells her, “It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it, your mother had it comin’. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.”
Over a decade has passed since The Bride (a.k.a. Beatrix Kiddo) laid down her sword and set out to raise her own daughter, but if a third Kill Bill film were to happen, it would almost certainly involve an adult version of Nikki plotting to disturb Ms. Kiddo’s maternal bliss — though we’d also have to assume Kiddo’s own child (possibly trained in the deadly arts by her ass-kicking mom) would factor into the action as well.
Oh, the possibilities are endless for a potential Kill Bill Vol. 3. Even if the film never gets made, it’s nice to know that Tarantino and Thurman have moved passed the bad blood spawned from a near-fatal accident that occurred on the set of the original Kill Bill movies. That accident ended up leaving Thurman with a bum knee, putting a big hurt on the pair’s friendship, and eventually led many industry insiders to question Tarantino’s on-set tactics with his actors. While many of those questions remain (justly or not), it seems clear that Thurman has moved passed the discourse. She even encouraged her daughter, Stranger Thingsbreakout Maya Hawke, to work with Tarantino on Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
That last tidbit might lead Tarantino fans to wonder whether we might one day see Uma and Maya teaming up to play mother and daughter on the big screen in a potential Kill Bill Vol. 3, but then we’d probably be getting more than a little bit ahead of ourselves there.
Either way, the waiting game is on to see what project Tarantino chooses to be his 10th (and possibly last) cinematic adventure. Until then, we should all rejoice that the wait is almost over to lay eyes on his latest flick, as Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is slated to hit multiplexes across the land on July 26.
