Brad Pitt is back as stuntman-turned-Hollywood fixer Cliff Booth in the first full trailer for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, a follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that shifts the action eight years forward to 1977.
This time, Tarantino has written the screenplay but handed directing duties to David Fincher, reuniting Pitt with the filmmaker behind Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
The film brings back the character that earned Pitt the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2020, but places him in a Hollywood markedly different from the world of the 2019 film.
Cliff becomes a fixer
The new story is set in Los Angeles in 1977, eight years after the events depicted in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Booth, once best known as actor Rick Dalton’s stunt double, is now taking on discreet jobs as a fixer for people in the film industry.
The trailer shows Booth navigating an increasingly murky world of movie stars, criminals and Hollywood power brokers, with murder, blackmail, theft and extortion forming part of the backdrop.
The footage retains Booth’s laid-back persona while suggesting that his new line of work will again draw him towards violence and trouble.
Unlike the original film, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton is not at the centre of the new story, with the narrative instead built around Booth’s life after the events of 1969.
Fincher takes over
The project brings together two distinctive filmmakers, with Tarantino creating the story and Fincher directing it.
Tarantino directed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which followed fading television actor Dalton and Booth as they navigated a changing film industry in 1969 Los Angeles, against the backdrop of the Manson Family murders.
The new film moves away from that period and into late-1970s Hollywood, with Fincher putting his own visual stamp on Tarantino’s character and screenplay.
Pitt and Fincher have previously collaborated on three films, beginning with Se7en in 1995, followed by Fight Club in 1999 and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008.
New cast joins Pitt
The film also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Peter Weller.
Caan plays television star Charlie Peters, while Debicki appears as his agent Karen Crosby and Gugino plays Peters’ wife, Toni. Abdul-Mateen II plays former football star-turned-actor Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison.
Matt Groove and JB Tadena appear as the gangster Verdusco brothers, while Corey Fogelmanis and Karren Karagulian are also part of the ensemble.
Pitt is also producing the film alongside Ceán Chaffin.
IMAX first, Netflix later
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth will receive an exclusive two-week global IMAX run beginning November 25.
It will then premiere on Netflix on December 23.
The theatrical window gives the streaming platform one of its most prominent big-screen releases of the year, with the film positioned as a major collaboration involving Pitt, Fincher and Tarantino.
For Pitt, the film also marks his first return to Booth since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where the easy-going stuntman emerged as one of the film’s defining characters and earned the actor his first competitive Oscar for acting.