Quentin Tarantino thinks there's a movie 'war'

Quentin Tarantino believes "original movies" like his are "at war" with huge franchises.

The 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' director believes the likes of 'Star Wars' and Marvel films could have secured "world domination" over the last year but a number of strong stories outside of blockbuster series came out and performed just as well at the box office.

He told Deadline: "I actually think a war for movies got played out this last year.

"As far as I can see, the commercial product that is owned by the conglomerates, the projects everybody knows about and has in their DNA, whether it be the Marvel Comics, the 'Star Wars', 'Godzilla' and 'James Bond', those films never had a better year than last year.

"It would have been the year that their world domination would have been complete. But it kind of wasn't.

"A lot of original movie comment came out and demanded to be seen, and demanded to be seen at the theaters. That ended up becoming a really, really strong year."

The 56-year-old filmmaker admitted he feared it could have been the "last stand" for original content had it not fared as well as it did in 2019.

He said: "If it hadn't done it this year, it might have been the last stand for movies like that. This is a really groovy year. To combat something like 'Avengers: Endgame', which for the month before it came out and the month after, you couldn't talk about anything else.

"They tried to do that with this last 'Star Wars' and I don't think it quite worked, but you couldn't get on United Airlines without running into all the tie-ins, and even the safety commercial had a 'Star Wars' scene."

'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' has had a successful run during awards season and Tarantino is "really proud" to have made the shortlists.

He said: "I'm really proud to be nominated with the other films that just got nominated. I think when you sum up the year, it's cinema that doesn't fall into that blockbuster IP proof status, made its last stand this year."