Quentin Tarantino felt like he was ‘letting down’ Brad Pitt by ditching Cliff Booth sequel

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Derek LawrenceTue, November 3, 2026 at 10:58 PM UTC

Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt at the 2023 Golden Globe AwardsCredit: Christopher Polk/NBC via Getty ImagesKey Points -

Quentin Tarantino thought he was “letting down” Brad Pitt by not making a Cliff Booth sequel.

The filmmaker says he couldn’t believe it when Pitt told him that David Fincher was interested in the script.

Tarantino felt validated by the fact that Fincher would want to direct his work.

Quentin Tarantino says he felt like he was “really letting down” Brad Pitt by ditching his Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood sequel, only to be blown away that Pitt’s Fight Club collaborator David Fincher wanted to save the day.

Pitt won an Oscar for starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Taratino’s Once Upon a Time, and both he and the filmmaker were keen to continue the story of Pitt’s Hollywood stuntman Cliff Booth. But, after writing the script for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, Tarantino opted against it being the 10th and final film that he directs.

“[Pitt] was the one I felt I was really letting down when I didn’t do it,” Tarantino admitted to Empire. “I felt bad about that.”

In the joint conversation with Fincher and Tarantino, the former says he came into the picture because Pitt was “disappointed that he wasn’t going to play Cliff Booth again.” Fincher previously directed Pitt in Seven, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, so the A-lister turned to his old friend, asking if Fincher would read Tarantino’s script. Fincher was down to check it out, as long as Tarantino gave permission.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Tarantino recalls. “I was like, ‘Really? You think he’d be interested? F---ing yeah: show it to him!’”

Fincher was instantly “smitten” with the project, but Tarantino worried that he’d talk the Social Network auteur out of it.

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“The first couple of times we spoke, I was the male trying to talk this gorgeous woman into f---ing me,” he admitted. “I was trying to maneuver it so I wouldn’t say anything that f---s s--- up ... One of the things that made this all work was my excitement over David doing my material. I’ve gotten a lot of respect as a screenwriter, but I still feel that people think that I’m a director who just writes s--- for himself. The fact that a director of David’s caliber would spend a year-and-a-half of his life doing my material was wonderful. It said a lot about what was on the page.”

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Released in 2019, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood takes place in 1969 Los Angeles and follows a fading TV star, Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), and his stunt double-turned-driver, Cliff. The latter is quiet and cool, and he gets plenty of badass, hero moments, between (controversially) beating up Bruce Lee and (not-controversially) killing members of the Manson family.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth jumps ahead to 1977, when Cliff is acting as a studio fixer in Hollywood. Joining Pitt in the cast are Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Scott Caan, and Timothy Olyphant.

“He’s so into it,” Fincher said of Pitt. “The weirdest, most interesting part of this, for me, is that I’ve never been in a situation where the person playing the character knows more about that character than you’ll ever know. Sometimes you have to push back on that. I knew the new stuff, and Brad knew who the guy was, so Brad could withstand the hurricane of, ‘What about this? What about that?’ He was like, ‘No, no, no. I got this.’”

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens exclusively in IMAX on November 25, before landing on Netflix a month later.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”