Tarantino dropped Cliff Booth as his tenth film and handed it to Fincher - his novel lands on 8 December, between the IMAX run and Netflix
Quentin Tarantino is beating David Fincher to it — with a novel.
If you thought we were done with Cliff Booth after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, think again. Quentin Tarantino isn’t quite ready to hang up the stuntman’s boots — at least, not in book form. We’re getting a full-blown Cliff Booth novel, and yes, there’s a new film spin-off directed by David Fincher on the way. The timelines are a bit of a dog’s breakfast, so let’s break down what’s actually happening here.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth will hit bookshelves on 8 December, just before the Fincher film lands on Netflix.
A Novel Before (and After) the Movie
Tarantino’s latest book, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, is being published by HarperCollins on 8 December. That’s after the movie release in cinemas, but still before Fincher’s version hits streaming. It’s a pretty standard Tarantino move — remember, he novelised Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before the film came out, so he’s got a taste for this sort of thing. Details are being kept fairly tight, but the basic pitch is simple: the ‘Swinging Sixties’ are long gone, but Cliff Booth keeps stumbling into trouble, whether as a stuntman, war hero, bartender, or bloke occasionally getting mixed up in shadier jobs for mates. You get the idea.
Here’s how the schedule shakes out:
- The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (that’s the film title) opens in IMAX on 25 November
- The Booth novel arrives 8 December
- Fincher’s film hits Netflix on 23 December
Fincher Takes the Helm, Pitt Returns
Now, here’s the odd bit: originally, Tarantino had ambitions for Cliff Booth’s next outing to be his own tenth and final film. Brad Pitt wanted back in, but Tarantino wasn’t thrilled about wrapping up his directing career with a sequel. Instead, Pitt asked if he could find someone else to direct. Tarantino said it’d depend entirely on who. Enter David Fincher — a choice most directors would bite your hand off for — and Tarantino quickly gave his blessing.
Besides Pitt’s return as Booth, the film stacks the deck with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, and a few more faces you’ll recognize.
Tarantino’s So-Called Last Act
Tarantino has been banging on for ages about only doing ten feature films before he calls it quits. For a while, the tenth was going to be a Booth sequel, but he got cold feet. On The Church of Tarantino podcast, he explained why he moved on from the project:
"I love this script, but I’m still walking down the same ground I’ve already walked. It just kind of unenthused me. This last movie, I’ve got to not know what I’m doing again. I’ve got to be in uncharted territory."
No word yet what his actual swansong will be. For now, Tarantino’s moved ahead with his stage play, The Popinjay Cavalier, recently pulling in Sacha Baron Cohen for the lead role.