Quentin Tarantino knew something was up when he walked into his first meeting with Fortnite.
“I showed up to the meeting thinking that they would want to license the characters and that they wanted to get my ideas about what might be something fun to do,” he told a packed audience at a special conference. Fortnite now Presentation event at its Vista Theater in Los Angeles. “But no, they had something else in mind.”
That “something else” was an unexpected request: “Do you have anything that is between eight and 12 minutes long that might be good for our purposes?” They didn’t directly mention their iconic characters, he added, “but that was implied.”
Fortunately, Tarantino had just what he needed: an unfilmed sequence buried in his original draft of Kill Bill. The short, The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge, focuses on Yuki, Gogo Yubari’s twin sister, who seeks revenge against Uma Thurman’s Girlfriend. He had cut the material years ago because “it was too crazy, it was too action.”
They dusted it off and sent it to Fortnite, “and they said, ‘Let’s do this.’ And here we are.”
Thurman, who returns as The Bride through voice and motion capture work, joined him for the event. When asked how he felt about reprising the role, he said, “I thought it was cool…this is such a new audience for the movie.”
The project also reunited her with Tarantino: “We have had an incredible life together in film… I challenge anyone to have more extraordinary experiences than what I have had with this man.”
Tarantino, who also voices Bill in the short, said the crossover between Fortnite and Kill Bill fans made the collaboration seem natural. “This is a lost chapter that I always wanted to see the light of day.”
He Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge premieres on Fortnite on November 30 and screens theatrically with Kill Bill: The Whole Damn Thing starting December 5.
