Quentin Tarantino to retire from movies

“I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off,” the Pulp Fiction director said at a question and answer session for his next film The Hateful Eight (a western which sees bounty hunters trapped together by a blizzard).

“I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game, and I like the idea of an umbilical cord connection from my first to my last movie."

“I’m not trying to ridicule anyone who thinks differently, but I want to go out while I’m still hard.”

However, fans shouldn’t be too worried just yet – Tarantino still thinks he has a couple of films left in him.

“I like that I will leave a 10-film filmography, and so I’ve got two more to go after this,” he said according to Deadline. “It’s not etched in stone, but that is the plan. If I get to the 10th, do a good job and don’t screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career."

Tarantino imagines he’d spend his time post-drecting “writing plays and books, going gracefully into my tender years,” though he added “If, later on, I come across a good movie, I won’t not do it just because I said I wouldn’t.”

“But 10 and done, leaving them wanting more – that sounds right.”

Still, Hateful Eight cast members Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson were less than convinced of the impending retirement, ridiculing Tarantino’s comments at the Q and A.

“You don’t actually believe that s***, do you?” Russell asked the audience.

Longtime collaborator Jackson added: “What’s Quentin going to do with himself if he’s not doing this?”

He might have a point – after all, this is the man who said he’d never make The Hateful Eight at all after the script was leaked a few months ago…

The Hateful Eight will be released in cinemas in 2015