Quentin Tarantino has killed off one of his movie characters.
The film director, who is an honorary guest at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, shared an update about his most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood via the official Twitter account of podcast The Video Archives.
In the posts, the podcast, which Tarantino co-hosts with writer Roger Avary, announced that Rick Dalton, the actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his 2019 film, had died.
The next episode, released on Tuesday (23 May), will be a Dalton “memorial episode designed by Quentin that features some of Rick’s nest roles”.
In preparation for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino wrote a book compiling Dalton’s history and his many fictional credits, some of which he worked on alongside his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).
Dalton is the centre of a popular theory related to Tarantino’s films that suggests Calvin Candie, the character played by DiCaprio in Django Unchained (2012), is actually a fictional character played by Dalton.
Tarantino, who recently revealed which of his scenes he finds most tense, has set his next film, which is expected to be his last project before he retires from directing. It will be a 1970s-set drama called The Move Critic.
In 2019, Tarantino discussed what he plans to do after he retires from filmmaking.
Meanwhile, DiCaprio has scored rave reviews for his role in Martin Scorsese’s new film Killers of the Flower Moon, which premiered at Cannes. Find The Independent’s review of the film, which will be released on Apple TV+ in October, here.
