Quentin Tarantino Once Wrote A Screenplay For John Woo That Never Got Made

Dan Lalonde
Apr 28
2 min read

I think when John Woo's Face/Off came out in 1997 we could solidify the Director as the best Action filmmaker of all-time. For those who never seen his films I recommend you watch his early Hong Kong thrillers Hard Boiled and The Killer.

In a newly resurfaced 1992 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) press conference, Quentin Tarantino revealed a lost piece of his cinematic history: a screenplay he wrote specifically for Hong Kong action legend John Woo.

While promoting Reservoir Dogs alongside Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Michael Madsen, Tarantino spoke passionately about Woo, calling him the best action filmmaker since Sergio Leone.

Tarantino explained he conceived a “great story” tailored to Woo’s explosive, stylistic sensibilities. The plan was simple—finish Pulp Fiction and then dive into the Woo collaboration. However, the massive success of Pulp Fiction shifted Tarantino’s trajectory, and the Woo project quietly faded away.

“He’s reinventing the genre there in Hong Kong,” Tarantino said, expressing admiration for Woo’s groundbreaking action cinema. Writing a "lunkheaded" action flick was not the goal; instead, Tarantino believed he had crafted a genuinely compelling story worthy of Woo’s vision.

Despite the excitement at the time, no other interviews or reports have substantially documented this screenplay, leaving fans to wonder what could have been. A Tarantino-Woo fusion, blending razor-sharp dialogue with balletic gunfights, would have been a dream pairing.

Given Tarantino’s recent tendency to hand screenplays to other filmmakers—like David Fincher’s sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—there remains a sliver of hope he might someday revisit the idea. Until then, it stands as another tantalizing "what if" in Tarantino’s storied career.