All About 'Yuki's Revenge,' the 'Lost Chapter' of 'Kill Bill' Now Playing in Theaters

Uma Thurman makes a welcome return as The Bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, in Yuki’s Revenge, the “lost chapter” of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill which was released earlier this month with the new installment of Fortnite. Currently, the short is playing in cinemas nationwide as part of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. Here’s everything you need to know about Yuki’s Revenge: The ‘Lost Chapter’ of Kill Bill.

Yuki's Revenge Was Two Decades in the Making

Yuki’s Revenge visualizes a sequence from Tarantino’s original screenplay that the director scrapped in the early scripting stages because “it was too crazy, too violent, and just too much action,” Tarantino told Variety. It concerns the eponymous twin sister of Gogo Yubari, the teenage assassin who meets her end at the hands of The Bride while protecting O-Ren Ishii at the House of Blue Leaves. Stalking The Bride in an ice cream van, Yuki comes face-to-face with the former assassin in the parking lot of a cheap motel after The Bride has slain Vernita Green. Bent on avenging her sister’s death, Yuki proceeds to pursue The Bride across town, through swimming pools and into houses, as they blast each other with firearms.

When the director was contacted by Fortnite and Epic Games, he saw an opportunity to resurrect the chapter from the dead. “They got together with me to talk about some situation where my characters and Fortnite do something kind of groovy,” Tarantino said. “So I show up at the meeting thinking that we’re just going to talk about that they want to license the characters, and they want to get my ideas about what will be a fun thing to do.”

Instead, he was told they wanted to create a short-form entertainment within the eight-to-12-minute range “that could be good for [Fortnite’s] purposes and make sure [Tarantino’s] iconic characters are wrapped up inside this.” So he sent along the script for Yuki’s Revenge, which “never even made second drafts.” “I actually thought maybe the ship had sailed as far as, like, doing new material. I was wrong,” he said. “When I wrote the first draft of the script, there was a lost chapter that, frankly, I just didn’t think we could pull off [in the original film]. And Yuki has been a figment of my imagination for over 20 years.”

Uma Thurman Returns as The Bride

The short required Thurman to return to reprise her role of The Bride, this time with the added wrinkle of wearing a camera for the purposes of transmitting her live-action performance to animation. “It’s so novel to wear the camera on your head, but I completely forgot about it; just started to live in the moments of the scenes we were doing,” Thurman told Variety. “This is a new audience for the movie,” she added. “It’s really moving. It’s really great, and I think it’s something meant to be.”

Tarantino Was Directly Involved in the Short's Creation

As far as Tarantino’s continued involvement, he continued to give notes throughout the process—much to the surprise of the creative team at ThirdFloor, which created the short. “He gave notes while acting it out. He was even crawling on the floor at times, telling us, ‘It’s like this.’ He was totally in it,” Third Floor’s chief creative officer Josh Wassung told The Hollywood Reporter. “That was really inspiring, and the notes were really fun. It was an exciting moment for the entire team to rally around.” Tarantino even stepped in to voice Bill in the short’s cold open, filling in for the late David Carradine.

Though Tarantino didn’t technically direct Yuki’s Revenge, ThirdFloor did their best to honor the filmmaker’s singular style. “Animation is often very quick,” Wassung explained, “but we have to go with Quentin’s style, and so you sit there and watch Yuki, and you can see the facial expressions, hold on the breaths, draw it out. It’s very authentic to honoring Quentin’s work and his original film.”