Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino gets to fulfil a dream with “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge,” a short film tied to his two-part “Kill Bill” films that’s finally being brought to life two decades later.
Debuting a few hours ago in the live service game “Fortnite,” Tarantino worked with Epic Games on creating the eight-minute animated short, which debuted in the game today. The title used motion capture technology combined with Unreal Engine to transfer Uma Thurman’s performance as The Bride into the gaming platform.
Speaking at his Vista Theater in Los Angeles at a special launch event, Tarantino spoke about how the project came about (via Variety):
“They [Epic] got together with me to talk about some situation where my characters and Fortnite do something kind of groovy. So I show up at the meeting thinking that we’re just going to talk about that they want to license the characters, and they want to get my ideas about what will be a fun thing to do.”
Instead, they asked him if he had something in the 8-12 minute range that “could be good for our purposes and make sure your iconic characters are wrapped up inside this.”
The result was a chapter in the original first draft of “Kill Bill” that was cut super early and has now been resurrected. In the chapter, Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) had a twin sister named Yuki who was sick that night at the House of Blue Leaves and left early.
Tarantino says it was cut mostly due to pacing and content concerns:
“It was too crazy, too violent, and just too much action… it never even made second drafts. I just didn’t think we could pull off. And Yuki has been a figment of my imagination for over 20 years… I want both the ‘Kill Bill’ fan and the Fortnite fan to be totally effing happy about this collaboration.”
The animated short will also appear on the big screen as part of an exclusive limited theatrical run of the 281-minute cut of “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” next weekend. It won’t be cut into the film, rather it’s a separate thing screening alongside it.
