Is Kill Bill 3 Happening? Here's What Quentin Tarantino Has Said Over The Years
Sometimes, two epic movies full of blood-soaked, sword-fighting, vengeance-driven action just isn't enough. At one point or another, every Quentin Tarantino fan has had the same question cross their minds: When are we ever going to get "Kill Bill 3"? It's been almost exactly 20 years since the first volume landed in theaters, starring Uma Thurman as the Bride cutting a bloody swath through a gauntlet of formidable martial artists in the ultimate revenge fantasy. The beloved throwback to classic samurai movies and gun-slinging Westerns left quite a mark on pop culture upon its release, inspiring endless parodies and notable music videos and no shortage of speculation as to whether Tarantino would ever return to this distinctive world ever again.
As fans are all too aware of, that's been something of a revolving door ever since 2003. Depending on when you asked Tarantino, you'd either be met by enthusiastic excitement and headline-grabbing pronouncements about the prospects of a third film ... or cavalier dismissal. With every year that's passed and every subsequent movie that chipped way at the director's self-imposed limit of 10 total films before he retires (the common assumption is that he counts both "Kill Bill" entries as one single film), the chances of seeing "Kill Bill 3" come to fruition have faded more and more. But is hope truly dead?
It's worth taking a trip down memory lane and investigating everything Tarantino has actually said about whether we'll ever see "Kill Bill 3" slash its way into theaters, against all odds.
Why hasn't Kill Bill 3 happened yet?
Of all the major filmmakers currently working, probably only Guillermo del Toro has more unmade productions under his belt than Tarantino does. The famously outspoken and opinionated director has never been gun-shy about talking up high-profile projects he's flirted with making in the past. "Star Trek," James Bond, and numerous comic book adaptations only make up a few of the properties that Tarantino has gleefully attached himself to at one point or another. Meanwhile, "Kill Bill 3" has continued to bubble in the background, just waiting for the stars to align and finally become a reality.
Reality, it seems, has had different ideas to this point. Several varying factors have combined to stall any efforts to jumpstart a third volume of "Kill Bill," primarily having to do with Tarantino's incredibly busy schedule. When he's not acting in movies that cast him as god, stirring the pot with incendiary comments to the press, or writing entire books based on his own characters, the undeniably talented artist has spent the latter years of his filmmaking career crafting one banger (as the kids say) after another, churning them out every three or four years like clockwork. Given that the "Kill Bill" movies represent something of an outlier in his filmography, which is noticeably absent of sequels and filled to the brim with original projects, it's not a terribly big surprise to see him focus on breaking new ground rather than revisiting his own past successes.
Everything Quentin Tarantino has said about Kill Bill 3
For better or worse, Tarantino has turned himself into the primary source for practically every update on "Kill Bill 3" during the last several years. While that's great for our purposes here, giving us a long and winding trail of quotes charting every major and minor development on the hypothetical threequel, it also comes with the byproduct of requiring that one takes every word out of Tarantino's mouth with a healthy grain of salt. After years of teasing the idea of a third film, our journey picks up in 2012 just ahead of the "Django Unchained" premiere. At the time, we reported the director's latest remarks on the production, saying that:
"I don't know if there's ever going to be a 'Kill Bill Vol. 3.' We'll see, probably not though."
Fast-forward another several years, however, and Tarantino's tone changed markedly. In 2016, Tarantino informed Variety that "I'm not committing to it, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Bride made one more appearance before the whole thing is said and done." Supposedly, he would repurpose old ideas that he ultimately cut from both "Kill Bill" movies. Then, all throughout 2019, countless headlines breathlessly announced that Tarantino had held talks with Thurman herself to discuss reprising her role and picking up where she left off on the Bride's story. A few months later, he boldly proclaimed that the project was "definitely in the cards."
But that brings us to our most recent update. In July of 2023, Deadline reported that Tarantino has effectively quashed any hopes of sneaking in "Kill Bill 3" under the wire. Trumpeting his "last movie" as a script following a male movie critic in the 1970s, this was the final nail in the coffin for the Bride.
What could happen in Kill Bill 3?
There's plenty of information floating around about how Tarantino would've approached a third outing. To nobody's surprise, one obvious option would've been to delve even further into the Bride's relationship with her long-lost daughter, B.B. Presumed dead by the Bride until a surprise reveal in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," B.B.'s survival allowed a measure of salvation for the weary and utterly spent warrior Beatrix Kiddo, along with providing a natural lead-in for any future sequel. As we previously reported, Tarantino once talked up what this could've looked like:
"I think it's just revisiting the characters 20 years later and just imagining the Bride and her daughter, B.B., having 20 years of peace, and then that peace is shattered. And now the Bride and B.B. are on the run."
But that's not the only narrative thread Tarantino considered. Viewers may remember a certain loose end back in "Vol. 1," when the Bride kills her former friend and now-enemy Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) at a pivotal moment in the film. Traumatically, one witness to the killing is none other than Vernita's young daughter named Nikki, whom the Bride immediately shows remorse to before doubling down on the fact that Vernita simply had to go. Accordingly, Tarantino celebrated the release of "Vol. 2" by hyping up his vision of how this plot point could pay off in a future third movie to Entertainment Weekly:
"The star will be Vernita Green's daughter, Nikki. I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale [Julie Dreyfus] will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on the Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as the Bride deserved hers."
Who could the stars of Kill Bill 3 be?
We at least have a solid idea of who Tarantino would've brought back — and introduced — for a potential "Kill Bill 3." Along with Thurman in the lead role, of course, one possibility could've seen the actor's real-life daughter, Maya Hawke, cast as the Bride's grown-up daughter B.B. Tarantino himself raised this possibility while riffing about a movie featuring the two characters as its leads: "[...] Just the idea of being able to cast Uma and cast her daughter Maya in the thing would be f***ing exciting," he explained on Joe Rogan's podcast in July of 2021. But that's not all. Tarantino went on to imagine a scenario where multiple other characters come back as well:
"Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) is still out there, Sophie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) got her arm cut off, but she's still out there. They all got Bill's money. Actually, Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) had a twin sister and so her twin sister could show up."
If not this storyline, however, another young star could've become a part of "Kill Bill 3" — if one former franchise actor got their way, that is. Vivica A. Fox once pitched her own fan-cast for Vernita's daughter. As she told NME in a July 2020 interview, "I was doing an interview and they asked, 'What young actress would you get to play your daughter?' [...] So I went, 'Zendaya!'"
Unfortunately, it appears that these dream scenarios will have to remain just that — a dream. The closer Tarantino gets to winding down his directing output (although we'll see if he actually holds to that), the less likely "Kill Bill 3" becomes. If so, we'll just have to content ourselves by revisiting both "Kill Bill" movies again and again.