I wonder if he killed this film because he lost faith in the project, or if it's because he just decided it wouldn't be a fitting "tenth film" since he's so married to that number – I'm assuming the latter.
Whatever it is he makes next, I'll be there, of course. But I'm also kinda bummed, I really loved the sound of this one.
What's especially interesting here is the presence of Cliff Booth from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I had speculated a while back that we might get some mention of Rick Dalton's filmography in this, given the focus on (a fictionalized version of?) a real film critic, so it's interesting to see that it was indeed going to be tethered to OUATIH in some capacity (OUATIH is probably tied with Jackie Brown as my favorite Tarantino movie).
If The Movie Critic really never gets made, so that he can adhere to his "ten films" thing, then I hope that we get it in some capacity. Publish the script, or adapt it into a novel (we know that, post filmmaking, Tarantino wants to write more books [and there's precedent for prose storytelling in that world now, with OUATIH's novelization], in addition to developing a TV series that he wrote).