"Kill Bill" to pull a Matrix Sequel Split

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

It's official. Kill Bill is going to be released as two 90 minute movies rather than one approx. 3 hour movie.

Personally, I didn't have any trouble sitting through and loving the 2.5+ hours of Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Sounds like Miramax has either (A) Lost faith in the man who put their studio on the map; (B) Wants to make a quick buck by charging fans twice to see one movie; or (C) Between this and their long war with Scorsese over Gangs of NY, they've finally given up the ghost on trying to be the "artist's" movie studio.

 

[John Crichton]

Works for me. When I first heard the rumor I hoped it would be true. This will allow for all 200 pages of the script to make it into the movie. I'll bet that each film will end up being 2 hours, not just 90 minutes.

http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=15673

 

[Green Knight]

I'm just surprised they're willing to negotiate new contracts with the actors, who signed on for one movie and are getting paid for one, but now it turns out they've actually made two movies. That's certainly more than what the cast of the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers, which included Charlton Heston, Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, and Michael York, got (FYI, The Three Musketeers was originally supposed to be one movie, to. But the producers decided to split it into two movies, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. So the cast ended up making two movies, but only ended up getting paid for one).

Personally I don't care either way, as I'm not even sure I care enough to see this movie. From Dusk Til Dawn pretty much killed any interest in Quentin Tarentinos' movies I might have.

But as far as splitting it goes, I gotta disagree with the first poster. This isn't a sign of Miramax losing faith in Tarentino. Rather, this is a sign of complete faith in him. He came to them with this idea with the stipulation that he get to make it at its original length. And guess what, they agreed! They didn't make him cut it down. And now they're splitting it into two movies. They probably figured it'd be to long for one showing, BUT they didn't ask Tarentino to cut it short. Instead, they're still releasing the whole thing. It isn't lack of faith that leads one to want to spend money on TWO WHOLLY SEPARATE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. If they had no faith or wanted it shorter, then they could've told him to cut it short, but instead, they let him keep it all, and are willing to promote not one but TWO movies. That, to me at least, is a sign of EXTREME faith. Hell, I may have to go see it just because of that. If someone's willing to splurge that much money on one of Quentin Tarentino's movies, then odds are that it's a pretty damned good movie, like Pulp Fiction, and not a piece of dreck, like From Dusk Til Dawn (Which, in all honesty, WAS a good movie. At least til the moment the vampires showed up. You can pinpoint, TO THE SECOND, the moment that movie started to suck, which was the instant that the first supernatural element in the movie, appeared).

 

[FraserRonald]

Personally I don't care either way, as I'm not even sure I care enough to see this movie. From Dusk Til Dawn pretty much killed any interest in Quentin Tarentinos' movies I might have.

I'm not trying to be an @$$, though I may come off as one, but are you aware that Robert Rodriguez directed From Dusk Til Dawn? Tarantino participated as an actor, producer and writer. Granted, you could blame it on him as the writer, but it was really Robert Rodriguez's film.

Actually, I got tired of Tarantino trying to get himself into everything (it seemed) at that point, but he has cooled off now. I really enjoyed Jackie Brown. It almost made up for the dreck he offered us in Four Rooms and I'm looking forward to Kill Bill

And I think you're bang on in your comments that it shows Miramax's faith in QT to be willing to spring for the added expense of two movies.

Edit: I subtracted a couple of rooms. Imagine how bad it would have been with SIX rooms!

 

[TiQuinn]

For the record, Tarantino wrote and starred in From Dusk Til Dawn, but Robert Rodriguez directed it. Sometimes the most talented people offer up the biggest flops.

 

[Assenpfeffer]

For the record, Tarantino wrote and starred in From Dusk Til Dawn, but Robert Rodriguez directed it. Sometimes the most talented people offer up the biggest flops.

Tarantino co-wrote From Dusk Till Dawn, with Rodriguez. QT wrote the first half of the movie, Rodriguez wrote the second - it was, in fact, two entirely separate scripts, neither of which was long enough to be made into a whole movie by itself.

 

[TiQuinn]

Tarantino co-wrote From Dusk Till Dawn, with Rodriguez. QT wrote the first half of the movie, Rodriguez wrote the second - it was, in fact, two entirely separate scripts, neither of which was long enough to be made into a whole movie by itself.

That explains quite a lot about that movie. I wonder if it would've been better if it hadn't been split up like that.

 

[WizarDru]

Remember, Miramax is, in their own words, "the house that Tarantino built." They owe most of their fortunes to Pulp Fiction's MASSIVE success. Without it, they never would have secured the kind of funding they have, since then.

QT runs very hot and cold with me, but I'm looking forward to this. Hell, I'd watch it as mere payback for QT backing and bringing over "Iron Monkey" in the way that he did.

 

[Green Knight]

That explains quite a lot about that movie. I wonder if it would've been better if it hadn't been split up like that.

No kidding! I had no idea that Tarentino had only written the first half. I wasn't sure if he directed it, but I knew he had a hand in writing it (And the problem I had with that piece of drek was the writing. I rarely notice anything about the directing). Didn't know that it was split like that. Usually co-wrote means that both writers had a hand in the entire script, not "I'll do the first half, and you do the second half". That certainly explains what happened in that movie, specifically how you CAN point to a specific point in that movie and know when it started to suck. That's because that's the point that the Rodriguez script kicks in (I must say, though, if I were Tarentino, I would've written that stripper teasing my character, too). Whatever the case, thanks for the info. Kill Bill just became a LOT more appealing.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

OK. I read a longer piece on Kill Bill after I posted last night, and it was very informative. However, I didn't get the feeling from it that QT was jumping for joy over having his movie chopped in half. What it sounded like to me was he made a deal in the beginning with Harvey Weinstein to film his entire script, and Weinstein dropped a technicality on him later. But I guess if QT isn't hysterical, I shouldn't be.

Much is being made of the financial risk Miramax is taking by releasing it this way. My question: If Kill Bill "1" tanks, how hard do you think they're going to push Kill Bill "2"? I could see that going direct-to-video if the first episode flops.

BTW, they better not even think about doing two separate DVD packages. They may be conning me into seeing one film in halvsies, but I'll be darned if I'm buying two separate DVDs.