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Kill Billmight not be dead after all.
Not only is the iconic, two-part revenge thriller fromQuentin Tarantinoreturning to theaters as a single, uncut film, as the filmmaker initially intended, but a seven-and-a-half-minute "lost chapter" is also finally coming to life in animated form.
The action-packed scene titled "The Lost Chapter: Yuki's Revenge" will be viewable in the massively popular game Fortnite — known for its pop culture crossovers, from Eminem to Marvel to John Wick — on Nov. 30, before making a limited theatrical run.
Though the scene was included in early drafts of theKill Billscript (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 producing content for Fortnite to promote its Chapter Seven,premiering today, the director took the opportunity to bring it to fruition.Uma Thurmaneven returned to reprise her starring role as Beatrix Kiddo, with filmmakers using cutting-edge motion capture technology and Epic Games' Unreal Engine to render animation that mirrored 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 simmering in his mind.
During a special screening of "Yuki's Revenge" at Tarantino's own Vista Theater in Los Angeles last week, the director, seated alongside Thurman, teased two of those ideas.
"I've got other things to do right now, but I had a wholeKill Billidea in my mind when we were doing it, and then I was so wiped out from doing the movie," the director told the audience. "I like the idea of a Bill origin. A story of Bill, about how Bill became Bill and the three godfathers that made Bill: Esteban Vihaio, Pai Mei, and Hattori Hanzō. Will I live long enough to do that? That remains to be seen."
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Kill Bill Vol. 1(2003), andKill Bill Vol. 2(2004) tell the epic revenge story of Thurman's Kiddo, a.k.a. the Bride, one of six members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, including their leader and her former lover, Bill (David Carradine). Though much of Bill's history remains shrouded in mystery, three of his former mentors appear throughout the films: Vihaio (Michael Parks), an elderly Mexican pimp and Bill's childhood father figure; Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), an infamous and reclusive kung fu master; and Hanzō (Sonny Chiba), a legendary Japanese swordsmith.
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 their first glimpse at a young Bill transforming into the powerful gangland boss he later becomes. Though, of course, after Carradine's death in 2009, the director would need to find another actor to play Bill. In "Yuki's Revenge," Tarantino himself voices the role.
As if that weren't enough to get Tarantino fans buzzing, the auteur also teased revisiting another idea he's long had up his sleeve. When first asked if he could see himself working again with animation and motion-capture, he said, "I could see some world between this and Japanese anime that I could find some happy medium or, you know, between the things that I couldn't physically do, like say the Vega Brothers movie, or something like that."
The director is referring to his dream of making a prequel to his classic films,Pulp FictionandReservoir Dogs, that would tie the movies together through brothers Vincent Vega (played by John Travolta inPulp Fiction) and Vic Vega (played by Michael Madsen inReservoir Dogs).
"I don't think I took it far enough for a story, but I had a premise," Tarantinotold CinemaBlendin 2019. "It would have taken place in Amsterdam. So it would have taken place in the time that Vincent was in Amsterdam. Remember inPulp Fiction, he had just come back from Amsterdam, and he was telling the whole story?
"He was running some club for Marcellus," the director continued, referring to the crime boss played by Ving Rhames. "And so, he was probably there for a couple of years. At some point, in his two-year stay in Amsterdam, running some club, Vic shows up to visit him. And it would have been their weekend. Exactly what happens to them or what trouble they get into, I never took it that far."
Tarantino never made the film, saying Travolta and Madsen had gotten too old to play the parts again, and that he would never consider using de-aging technology. But now, after his experience animating "Yuki's Revenge" with Thurman, the director sees an opportunity to revisit the idea — though, as with Carradine, he would need to find another actor to play Vic sinceMadsen died earlier this year.
Still, as the Bride tells several of her former assassin colleagues inKill Bill, it sounds like Tarantino has some "unfinished business" to attend to.
Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly
