David Fincher’s sequel to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – called The Adventures Of Cliff Booth – has started filming in Los Angeles.
In one of this year’s more surprising filmmaking developments, it was announced in April that David Fincher was about to direct a sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Reportedly called The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, it was originally going to be Tarantino’s tenth (and possibly final) movie, before he shoved the script in a drawer and moved on to other things.
Brad Pitt – who played stuntman Cliff Booth in 2019’s Once Upon A Time – managed to rescue the situation, however, and set it up as a project for he and Fincher to make at Netflix. It’s been reported that the streaming company paid $20m for Tarantino’s script.
With Netflix keen to get things going quickly, filming on the sequel is now underway – according to World Of Reel, the shoot began on the 28th July. Signs of the production have also popped up; gossip site Just Jared has published images of Pitt – in character as Booth, complete with blonde wig – outside the Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The cinema, which belongs to Tarantino, is said to have been dressed to look like the 1970s, with posters from the period’s movies – there’s one from the Richard Pryor comedy Which Way Is Up?, which suggests that the movie will take place in 1977.
Read more: Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction and the ‘Tarantinomania’ of 1994
Interestingly, 1977 is also the year that Rolling Thunder, one of Tarantino’s favourite films, came out. At one stage, it was thought that Tarantino’s tenth film would be called The Movie Critic, and while it also included Cliff Booth, it was also about an obscure film reviewer who wrote for a magazine. Rumoured to be set in 1977, it would also have seen Tarantino re-create scenes from some of his favourite movies – including Rolling Thunder.
More recent reports, however, suggest that it’ll be specifically about Cliff Booth, who by 1977 has turned from stunts to Hollywood ‘fixer’ – a rather shady job that involves keeping news of Hollywood stars’ antics out of the press.
How accurate is all of this? Could The Adventures Of Cliff Booth be about both a Hollywood fixer and a movie critic? Time will tell.
What is known is the cast. Aside from Brad Pitt, expect to see Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino and JB Tadena in the credits, as well as one Corey Fogelmanis, who’s recently joined the roster according to Deadline.
More on The Adventures Of Cliff Booth as we get it.
