Quentin Tarantino “wants to make a comedy”, he says, though he has not yet decided on his next film after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Tarantino was speaking at the Rome film festival where he was given a lifetime achievement award, and in remarks reported by Variety, the director discussed future projects, which include a book of film criticism and a TV series and added: “First, I want to make a comedy.”

He then went on to describe a scenario he was working on “but not like my next movie … something else that I’m thinking about doing”. Tarantino said it involved a “spaghetti western”. “It’s going to be really fun. Because I want to shoot it in the spaghetti western style where everybody’s speaking a different language … The Mexican bandido is an Italian; the hero is an American; the bad sheriff is a German; the Mexican saloon girl is Israeli. And everybody is speaking a different language. And you [the actors] just know: OK, when he’s finished talking then I can talk.”

Tarantino also explained that it was only by taking acting classes that he realised instead that he wanted to direct. He said: “Not only did I love movies more than the other kids in the class, but I cared about them, whereas I think they only cared about themselves. And the reason why is that I loved movies too much to be an actor.”

He added: “I didn’t want to just appear in them: I wanted the movie to be my movie.”

Tarantino said in 2016 that he planned to retire from film-making after completing 10 feature films; his 2019 release Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his ninth. On being asked if his next – and potentially final – film was going to be Kill Bill 3, Tarantino replied with a less than ringing endorsement: “Why not?”