Quentin Tarantino wants to make animated ‘Kill Bill’ origin story

kill Bill Can’t be dead after all.

Quentin Tarantino’s iconic, two-part revenge thriller is not only returning to theaters as a single, uncut film, as the filmmaker initially intended, but the seven-and-a-half-minute “lost chapter” is also finally coming to life in animated form.

The action-packed visual titled “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge” will be seen ahead of a limited theatrical release on November 30 in the wildly popular game Fortnite – known for its pop culture crossovers, from Eminem to Marvel to John Wick.

Although this scene was included in early drafts of kill Bill script (which you can still read online), Tarantino ultimately decided not to shoot it, citing budget and runtime concerns. But when Epic Games approached him about creating content for Fortnite to promote its Chapter Seven, premiering today, the director jumped at the opportunity to make it a success. Uma Thurman also returned to reprise her starring role as Beatrix Kiddo, with the filmmakers using state-of-the-art motion capture technology and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to render animation that mirrors her real-life facial expressions and movements.

And, it turns out, Tarantino had such a positive experience working with that style of animation that he’s now considering using it to revisit other as-yet-unrealized projects that have long been brewing in his mind.

Sitting with Thurman during a special screening of “Yuki’s Revenge” at Tarantino’s own Vista Theater in Los Angeles last week, the director teased two of those ideas.

“I have other things to do right now, but I have a lot kill Bill This idea came to my mind while we were doing it and then I was dropped from doing the film,” the director told the audience. “I like the idea of ​​Bill Mool. A story of Bill, about how Bill came to be and the three godfathers who created Bill: Esteban Vihayo, Pai Mei, and Hattori Hanzo. Will I live long enough to do this? That remains to be seen.”

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), and Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) tell the epic vengeance tale of Thurman’s Kiddo, aka The Bride, one of six members of the Deadly Viper assassination squad, including their leader and her former lover, Bill (David Carradine). Although much of Bill’s history is shrouded in mystery, three of his former mentors appear throughout the films: Vihayo (Michael Parks), an elderly Mexican broker and father figure to Bill’s childhood; Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), a notorious and reclusive kung fu master; and Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), a renowned Japanese swordsman.

So far, these characters have been introduced through their interactions with Kiddo. If Tarantino decides to make his proposed animated origin story, it would give audiences the first glimpse of a young Bill’s transformation into the powerful gangland boss he later becomes. Although, of course, following Carradine’s death in 2009, the director would need to find another actor to play Bill. Tarantino himself voices the role in “Yuki’s Revenge”.

As if that wasn’t enough to get Tarantino fans excited, the writer teased another idea he’s had up his sleeve for a long time. When first asked if he could see himself working with animation and motion-capture again, he said, “I can see some world between this and Japanese anime that I can find some happy medium or, you know, between things I physically can’t do, like a Vega Brothers film, or something like that.”

The director is referring to his dream of making a prequel to his classic films, pulp Fiction And reservoir Dogswho will link the films together through the brothers Vincent Vega (played by John Travolta) pulp Fiction) and Vic Vega (played by Michael Madsen). reservoir Dogs,

“I don’t think I took it far enough for a story, but I had a foundation,” Tarantino told CinemaBlend in 2019. pulp FictionHe had just come back from Amsterdam, and he was telling the whole story?

“He was running some clubs for Marcellus,” the director continued, referring to the crime boss played by Ving Rhames. “And so, he was probably there for a few years. During his two-year stay in Amsterdam, running some clubs, Vic came to visit him. And it must have been his weekend. What actually happens to them or what trouble they get into, I didn’t push it that far.”

Tarantino never made the film, saying that Travolta and Madsen were too old to play the roles again, and that he would never consider using de-aging techniques. But now, after his experience animating “Yuki’s Revenge” with Thurman, the director gets the opportunity to revisit the idea – although, like Carradine, he’ll need to find another actor to play Vic since Madsen died earlier this year.

Yet, as the bride tells several of her former murderous colleagues kill BillLooks like Tarantino has some “unfinished business” to settle.