Brad Pitt and David Fincher fans were treated to a surprise teaser drop at the Super Bowl on Sunday. The footage gives off a strong retro Hollywood vibe showcasing Cliff Booth’s outlaw charm that we witnessed in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Amidst the flashy, quick cuts of violence, guns, cigarettes, nudity, and profanity — many of them humorously censored as a stylistic gag which recalls a moment in Fincher's Fight Club, we see Elizabeth Debicki and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II appearing in era-appropriate looks and costumes. There is, of course, a reference to the violent events of the original film, which confirms that this story takes place after the events of the first.
The tone is characteristically sleek, ironic, edgy — all Fincher's usual trademarks on full display. One also finds here the sense of a Shane Black dark action comedy — think The Nice Guys and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth will have as its main focus the character played by Brad Pitt in the original. Earlier, at the premiere of his now immensely successful racing drama F1: The Movie, Pitt had said the film is more of an "episode" in Cliff Booth's life than a sequel, per se. "This is something that Quentin wrote. Not really a sequel but an episode of the character from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but he (Tarantino) didn't want to direct it at this point. And so our mutual friend David Fincher stepped in to direct it. We are doing it for Netflix, and we start filming in July. It should be really good fun," said the Fight Club actor in an interview with Deadline.
Aside from Pitt, the new cast members include Elizabeth Debicki ('Tenet"), Carla Gugino ("Watchmen"), Scott Caan ("Ocean's Eleven"), and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ("Aquaman").
It's not yet clear whether the project, which is expected to be a direct-to-Netflix release, would see the return of Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton too; if it happens, it would be a treat for fans of the 2019 film directed by Tarantino.
Tarantino later expanded the story — an "alternate history" take on the tragedy involving filmmaker Roman Polanski and girlfriend Sharon Tate — in its novelisation of the same name.
As per reports, the film's script has a connection to a recently-dropped project that Tarantino initially announced as his tenth film, titled 'The Movie Critic'. Apparently, the script that caught Fincher and Pitt's attention is an evolved version of what eventually became 'The Movie Critic'. The story is said to be an exploration of Cliff Booth's stand-alone adventures.
The reunion of Fincher and Pitt adds further excitement considering the acclaimed previous collaborations of the director and actor, namely Se7en, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.