Director Quentin Tarantino’s 20-year dream is finally coming true. The “Kill Bill” chapter known as “Yuki’s Revenge” is coming to life in Fortnite.
The animated short will also be shown on the big screen as part of the exclusive theatrical run of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.
Tarantino’s “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge” stars Uma Thurman, who reprises her role as the bride, and has a running time of 8 minutes. Tarantino and Thurman worked with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and used motion capture technology to transfer her performance to the gaming platform.
Tarantino explained how Fortnite and Epic Games were the perfect fit for Lost Chapters: Yuki’s Revenge at a special launch event held at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles.
He said, “They got together with me to talk about my character and the situation where Fortnite was going to do something fun. So I went into the meeting thinking we were just going to talk about them wanting to license the character. And they wanted to hear my ideas on what could be fun.”
As it turns out, the powers that be at Epic Games had other ideas in mind. Rather than license his character, they wanted to see if there was something in the 8-12 minute range that would be “suitable for our purposes and make sure your iconic characters fit within this.”
As it turns out, there was something about Tarantino.
He included entire chapters that existed in the first draft of “Kill Bill.” Director Tarantino revealed, “I didn’t even make a second draft.”
In this chapter, it was explained that Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) has a twin sister and that she left early that night sniffling at Aoba’s house.
Due to pacing issues, it was never made into a movie. “It was too crazy, too violent, too much action,” Tarantino said.
He also sent me the script. Tarantino said. “Actually, I thought the ship might have sailed to the point where we had new songs. I was wrong.” He added, “When I wrote the first draft of the script, there were chapters that were lost and, frankly, I didn’t think they would ever come to fruition. And Yuki has been a figment of my imagination for over 20 years.”
Epic Games Getty Images
Thurman surprised the audience by joining Tarantino to explain how motion capture technology helped bring The Bride to Fortnite.
Unreal Engine technology renders characters in real time. When capturing a performance, you can test poses and facial expressions to determine what works best. And when it came to getting the narration, the team had the actors’ facial data to help animate it.
“It’s such a novelty to put a camera on your head, but I completely forgot about it. I just started living in the moment of the scene I was filming,” Thurman said.
As for this new way to bring “Kill Bill” to audiences and tell the story of Yuki’s revenge, Thurman said he thought it was cool. “This is a new audience for this movie,” she continued, “It’s really moving. It’s really amazing and I think it’s well-deserved.”
Epic Games Getty Images
Lionsgate will release Tarantino’s “The Whole Bloody Affair,” a 4-hour cut (281 minutes with 15 minutes intermission) that combines “Kill Bill Vol. 1” and “Kill Bill Vol. 2” into a single feature-length movie on December 5th.
Thurman stars as a bride who is left alone after her ex-boss and lover, Bill, ambushes her at her wedding rehearsal, shoots her in the head, and takes her unborn child. To exact his revenge, he must first hunt down the remaining four members of the Deadly Viper assassination squad before confronting Bill himself.
“The Whole Bloody Affair” stars Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks and David Carradine as Bill. Produced by Lawrence Bender, written and directed by Tarantino, based on the characters from “The Bride” created by Q&U (Quentin and Uma).
Director Tarantino said of the crossover, “I hope both ‘Kill Bill’ fans and ‘Fortnite’ fans will be really excited about this collaboration.”
