David Fincher has revealed that he had to make some huge cuts to Quentin Tarantino’s The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth script before he could film it.
The upcoming Netflix film sees Brad Pitt reprise his Oscar-winning role from Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth screenplay was also written by Tarantino but Fincher has directed the spin-off.
Set in 1977, eight years after the events of the original movie, the new film finds Cliff dealing with “murder, blackmail, theft [and] extortion,” according to the official logline.
“Los Angeles no longer needs a hippie-slaying stuntman the way it did. But Hollywood will always have problems, problems that can only be solved by someone with Cliff’s unique (occasionally extralegal) abilities. When he’s not earning his keep bartending or as a projectionist, Cliff Booth is a fixer — solving situations for Hollywood’s great and, sometimes, not so good.”
In a new interview with Empire, Fincher explained just how much input he had on the project. “The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies. Somewhere in there was the Venn diagram of what Brad wanted to do, what I want to do, what Quentin wanted to do. Not ‘want to do,’ but the areas we would focus on,” he explained. “It wasn’t about the plot as much as it was about how the participants collided with one another in the back alleys of Hollywood in 1977.”
“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was a hangout movie, but you know you’re going to Cielo Drive. It has this force, thus I didn’t need a lot of plot. This script was very different,” added Tarantino. Instead of a hangout movie, he believes The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth is more like a “crime-story paperback.”
Elizabeth Debicki (talent agent Karen Crosby), Scott Caan (TV megastar Charlie Peters), Carla Gugino (Charlie’s wife Toni), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (pro footballer turned screen star Roderick ‘Hot Rod’ Harrison) Matt Groove and JB Tadena (the gangster Verdusco brothers) also star alongside Pitt.
Tarantino is also continuing Cliff Booth’s story in print with upcoming novel The Adventures Of Cliff Booth following his previous novelisation of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Explaining why he handed the Netflix project over to Fincher, Tarantino said: “I think me and David Fincher are the two best directors. So the idea that David Fincher actually wants to adapt my work, to me, shows a level of seriousness towards my work that I think needs to be taken into account.”
The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth will receive an exclusive two-week global IMAX run beginning on November 25, before arriving on Netflix on December 23.
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