Christopher Nolan Responds to Quentin Tarantino's Retirement Plans, "Do You Believe Him?"

For the entirety of his career, Quentin Tarantino has said he intends to direct no more than 10 movies and then retire. With the release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the auteur has filmed nine total projects making his tenth, The Movie Critic, his last as a filmmaker. That is, of course, if Tarantino's promise is to be believed according to Christopher Nolan. Nolan made the comments on the latest episode of the ReelBlend podcast, asking the hosts at one point, "And do you believe him?"

Tarantino's reasoning behind it all is that he doesn't want his resume to get so large, his work starts to be looked down upon or reviewed poorly. Whatever the case, Nolan added that he doesn't think he could retire after just 10 movies. Nolan's latest, Oppenheimer, is the 12th film he's directed.

"I'm not sure that I would trust my own sense of the absolute value of a piece of work to know whether or not it should have been brought into existence," Nolan continued. "I'm a big fan, as is Quentin, of films that maybe don't fully achieve what they try to, but there's something in there that's a performance, or a little structural thing, or a scene, you know, that's wonderful. And so, yes, I understand. I think wanted to keep a sort of perfect reputation of something, but also kind of don't want to take anything off the table."

Tarantino himself has said that even though he'll soon be done making movies, he's going to dabble in writing novels and taking on television projects.  "[A] motion picture, yes ... I could do a TV show. I didn't say I'm going to go into the night darkly, all right? I could do a TV show. I could do a short film. I could do a play. All kinds of things I could do, but I'll probably just be more of a writer," the filmmaker told Deadline earlier this year.

"I am ending the filmography," Tarantino added. "It's just time. It's just time to go out. I like the idea of going out on top. I like the idea of giving it my all for 30 years and then saying, 'OK, that's enough.' And I don't like working to diminishing returns. And I mean, now is a good time because I mean, what even is a motion picture anyway anymore? Is it just something that they show on Apple? That would be diminishing returns."

Opening on July 21st, Oppenheimer is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.