Quentin Tarantino and Fortnite Team Up on a Kill Bill Short — Coming Tomorrow

Photo: Epic Games

When reports first linked Fortnite and Quentin Tarantino ahead of the new season, the union felt unlikely. Tarantino is a staunch advocate for film prints — he programs only celluloid at his Los Angeles theaters — so the notion of his characters entering Fortnite’s virtual universe seemed improbable. With the fuller picture now available, the collaboration is easier to understand. Fortnite and Quentin Tarantino.

On Sunday, Tarantino’s animated short The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge premieres inside Fortnite. Built in Unreal Engine 5 and assembled using Fortnite assets, the short stages a brutal, stylized showdown between the Bride (Uma Thurman) and Yuki Yubari (Miyu Roberts), the sister of Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). Tarantino tapped a slice of his original Kill Bill script — material that had once been excised — and shaped it into this new sequence.

“When you’re dealing with something that’s going to be drastically too long, then you start losing the things that are easy to lose that don’t affect the story, and that was definitely the case with this,” Tarantino said during a Q&A at the short’s world premiere. “But also, it just seemed like too much to chew. I can imagine us — and we did — figuring out how to do the House of Blue Leaves scene, but how to figure out how to do the House of Blue Leaves scene and this thing in the course of one shoot just seemed like a bridge too far.”

For context, the House of Blue Leaves sees the Bride face O-Ren Ishii’s Crazy 88 — an extended, ultra-violent action sequence originally shown in black-and-white and presented in color for the first time in Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. Likewise, Yuki’s Revenge represents a sizable set piece that would have been costly and time-consuming to realize in the original production era.

Tarantino also dismissed the idea that this is simply a monetization play by Epic. “It would be a different story if Epic Games came to me and said, ‘Hey, look, can you come up with something to do with Kill Bill, some cockamamie thing to yank out of your butt?’ And I’m not saying that that wouldn’t be cool, but it wouldn’t be this,” he explained. “It wouldn’t be organic. It wouldn’t be literally a lost chapter.”

Perhaps most notable is Uma Thurman’s return as the Bride (Beatrix Kiddo). Thurman, who first inhabited the role in 2002, said she was thrilled to revisit the character and to collaborate with Tarantino again — especially because the process felt unlike their previous filmed projects: it unfolded entirely in the digital realm.

There were no period sets or costumes; Thurman performed in a motion-capture suit inside a studio. Without physical props or scenery, she leaned wholly on her performance and the director’s guidance to conjure the Bride.

“I think given that there was no environment, it’s just nice to rely purely on your creative acting,” Thurman said at the Q&A. “It’s like, Oh, there’s Beatrice. Just coming right out of me. You don’t need the room. You don’t need the outfit. You’ve just got your director, good dialogue, great people, and that’s just pure work.”

With the short finished, Tarantino’s version of Kill Bill stands as he intends — though he has also discussed a possible prequel idea. He’s mentioned a prequel concept.

The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge debuts on Nov. 30 at 2 p.m. EST inside Fortnite, and it will accompany select screenings of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Source: Polygon