The Real Reason The Kill Bill Trilogy Never Got Finished
In 2004, Kill Bill: Volume 2 ended on a pile of figurative question marks, to say nothing of a literal one. What happened to the California Mountain Snake, blinded and trapped in a trailer with a venomous black mamba? Would Vernita Green's daughter come looking for revenge? Who took over as leader of the Yakuza after Lucy Liu's extreme hair makeover? For years, Quentin Tarantino held the possibility of Kill Bill: Volume 3, and possibly even Volume Four, in front of audiences' faces like a bloodied carrot on a violently dismembered string. In a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly, the director outlined his plans to return to the series in fifteen years, picking up the story's loose plot threads and enlisting Ambrosia Kelley, the child actress who played Nikki in Volume 1, as the franchise's new vengeful protagonist.
Fifteen years have come and gone. The Bruce Lee-style yellow jumpsuit is a faded memory. In 2012, Tarantino conceded that it was unlikely he'd ever make another Kill Bill movie. But why?
"You and I have unfinished business"
The reasons were legion. The Weinstein Company's bankruptcy and subsequent disappearance in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal would be an easy answer if Tarantino didn't have every studio in Hollywood ready to take him out to a weird barefoot lunch.
A prominent aspect of the decision not to bring Kill Bill: Volume 3 to theaters seems to have been an infamous car accident that occurred during filming on the first two films. As detailed by NPR, Tarantino failed to properly check a stretch of back road before sending Uma Thurman barrelling down it at 40 miles per hour. As a result, Thurman crashed the car, and was badly injured. Tarantino called it "one of the biggest regrets" of his life, and has stated that his relationship with Thurman was badly damaged.
More recently, the two seem to have made amends, and in 2019, Tarantino stated in an interview with Andy Cohen that a sequel might still happen, stating "I have an idea now that could be interesting. I still wouldn't do it for a little bit. It would be at least three years from now. It is definitely in the cards." That's a long time to wait, but if he still feels raw about it a couple of years from now, we'll be waiting.