When Quentin Tarantino releases a new film, it’s kind of hard not to notice. As Django Unchained is now playing across the country, now’s the golden time to be inundated reviews, interviews, press events, TV spots, etc. — but not what he might do next. That much usually requires, give or take, another couple of years and more than a couple rumors interspersed through the interim.

I’d call this a Christmas miracle if it wasn’t December 27th, but, calendars be damned, I’m elated by this next bit of news. Whilst speaking to The Root (via ThePlaylist), Tarantino followed previously-stated thoughts on making Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained parts one and two, respectively, of a trilogy, and how he’d like to wrap that all up. Although none of this is set in stone — until things have actually started filming, few things are with the writer-director — he may go back to World War II for what, at the time, could be titled Killer Crow. And, boy, would this not win any more favors with Spike Lee.

It’s fitting that this almost sounds like an amalgamation of ideas found in both Basterds and Django — not only because it’s the closer, but also because the central idea is actually an excised piece from the former. As he said:

“My original idea for Inglourious Basterds way back when was that this [would be] a huge story that included the [smaller] story that you saw in the film, but also followed a bunch of black troops, and they had been f–ked over by the American military and kind of go apes–t. They basically — the way Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and the Basterds are having an ‘Apache resistance’ — [the] black troops go on an Apache warpath and kill a bunch of white soldiers and white officers on a military base and are just making a warpath to Switzerland.

So that was always going to be part of it. And I was going to do it as a miniseries, and that was going to be one of the big storylines. When I decided to try to turn it into a movie, that was a section I had to take out to help tame my material. I have most of that written. It’s ready to go; I just have to write the second half of it.”

(Funny enough, killing everyone in sight to make your way to Switzerland is, actually, the plot Enzo G. Castellari‘s The Inglorious Bastards. While it’s probably best he cut that for his own film with a similar title, placing it here makes a bit more sense; as is always the case with him, it’s not about a familiar idea, but what you do with it.)

And if you think the changing nature of its story won’t create some direct connection, think again: Tarantino says the Basterds would find themselves, although briefly, placed into the blood-soaked action of Killer Crow. (Chronologically, it’s expected to be set after the battle of Normandy, pre-Operation Kino.) Despite this existing source of inspiration and, too, most of it having been scrawled down, we shouldn’t necessarily expect the film to follow Django — he was ready to admit, “I don’t know exactly when I’m going to do it.” There are other things out there, you know.

We owe Quentin Tarantino the chance to take his time and get Killer Crow‘s script just right. In the meantime, let’s hope he can get something out sooner than another three-and-a-half years.

What do you think of Tarantino’s ambition to follow-up Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained?