Rumors raced around Hollywood today that the script Quentin Tarantino planned to make his last film but abandoned will see the light of day. It started with a wild report about a Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood sequel that originated in The Playlist. Being this is April Fool’s Day, it required some vetting.
So here is what we hear. Brad Pitt indeed got Tarantino’s blessing to show Pitt’s Se7en director David Fincher the script that focuses on subsequent adventures of Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood’s Cliff Booth character. And because Fincher is exclusive to Netflix, the movie — if it gets made — will be financed and released by Netflix, straight to streaming. Tarantino will be paid a fortune for his words, as he readies a play he’s written and works on the final film he’ll direct. That one seems headed for Sony, where Tarantino directed the first film. No way Tarantino would helm his final film for a streaming service, but he respects Fincher and Netflix has been Fincher’s domain since he helped establish the streaming giant with House of Cards.
It’s understandable that Pitt would want to reprise Booth: He won his first Academy Award for playing the stuntman and confidante of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio). There was a lot left to explore in Booth’s past as a hero soldier and stone-cold killer — in the movie he is depicted as maybe or maybe not deliberately killing his irate wife with a spear gun on a boat. He also takes out the trio of Manson family acolytes who knocked on Dalton’s door instead of Sharon Tate. Those unfortunates included Austin Butler and Mikey Madison, the latter of whom just won the Oscar for Anora.
That wife-killing allegation and many other questions about Booth are all answered in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: A Novel, which Tarantino wrote and published, adding reams of material and backstory on the Cliff Booth mythology. It included a fatal run in with a couple of goonish henchman of a mobster who tried to strongarm and scare Booth away from spending time in the company of the mobster’s mistress.
Tarantino did a lot more than a simple novelization of his movie, to the delight of fans of the film. When Deadline broke news that Tarantino decided rather shockingly to scrap his followup project and find another for the tenth and final film he will direct, it was evident that Booth was the principal character in The Movie Critic, a working title that likely corresponded to the fact that Booth’s passion for movie watching was explored in detail.
It is not certain this will all work out, and it seems unlikely that DiCaprio will take part in this one. But if you can’t have Tarantino continue the exploits of Cliff Booth, you could do a lot worse than have Fincher finishing the mission. No comment from Netflix.
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