Quentin Tarantino directed a lost chapter of Kill Bill for Fortnite

An eight-minute animated short to make a 20-year-old dream come true.

Quentin Tarantino is not ready to shoot his 10th film, but he is recently returning to Kill Bill.

After completing the assembly of The Whole Bloody Affairthe director finally fulfills a twenty-year-old dream: the lost chapter of Kill Billknown as “Yuki’s Revenge”, will finally see the light of day… but in the game Fortnite.

It’s an eight-minute animated short, which sees Uma Thurman reprise her role as The Bride. It will also arrive at the cinema, during an exclusive limited screening of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Tarantino and Thurman worked with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, using motion capture to transfer his performance into the video game world. At a special event at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles a few days ago, the director explained how Fortnite had become the ideal setting for this “lost chapter”. He says (via Variety):

“They came to me to imagine a situation where my characters and Fortnite could do something fun. I just thought we were going to discuss licensing the characters and my ideas for a cool project…”

But Epic Games had another vision. Rather than simply praising the characters, they wanted to know if he had something new, an 8 to 12 minute short film where his icons would be highlighted. And he just had a new chapter…

“It existed in the first draft of Kill Bill, but it never made it to the second draft“, reveals Tarantino. This chapter showed Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) with a twin sister and a cold at the party at the House of Blue Leaves, which made her leave early. Too crazy, too violent, too much action… it was cut for reasons of pacing. Tarantino sent the script to Epic Games, thinking that the project was too late.

“I thought it was too late to create new material. I was wrong!”

Yuki, the central character of this chapter, had been on his mind for over 20 years.

Uma Thurman surprised everyone by explaining how motion capture allowed her to bring The Bride to life in Fortnite. Unreal Engine technology allows poses and expressions to be tested in real time, and dialogues to be synchronized with facial animations.

“It was strange carrying the camera on my head, but I quickly forgot about it and just let myself be carried away by the scenes…”

As for this new way of telling the story of Yuki and his revenge, Thurman finds the concept brilliant: “It’s a new audience for the film. It’s moving, it really works, and it’s something that had to happen.”

The Whole Bloody Affairthe four-hour montage combining Kill Bill Vol. 1 And Flight. 2will be released in theaters on December 5 in the United States. No French release yet.