Quentin Tarantino stunned AFI Fest with 17 surprise minutes of Cliff Booth, and Netflix has already set the release dates
Tarantino unveiled the first 17 minutes of Cliff Booth at AFI Fest. The Brad Pitt film opens in Imax on November 25 and streams December 23.
AFI Fest attendees thought they were getting a Quentin Tarantino Q&A after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Instead, they got the first public footage from The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, along with a clearer idea of when everyone else will finally see it.
Tarantino surprised the crowd on Friday night during a special event tied to a screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. As the conversation wrapped, he offered something much bigger than a final answer: the opening 17 minutes of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth.
That made it the first public look at the follow-up, which Tarantino wrote and David Fincher directed. Brad Pitt returns as Cliff Booth, the stuntman and sidekick to Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton from the 2019 film, a performance that won Pitt an Oscar.
In the clip below, Tarantino introduces the footage and talks about why he returned to Cliff Booth.
pic.twitter.com/0flrYw0J73
Why Tarantino went back to Cliff Booth
Tarantino told the audience he loved the Cliff Booth character, loved the way Pitt played him, and saw him as a kind of paperback hero. He also spoke about how deeply he has stayed invested in the world of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which he has continued to build beyond the original movie.
The new story jumps forward from 1969 to 1977. According to the film's official description, Los Angeles no longer needs Booth as a stuntman in the way it once did, but Hollywood still has problems that call for his particular skills. When he is not bartending or working as a projectionist, Booth is now a fixer, handling situations for people in the industry with what the description calls his occasionally extralegal abilities.
When it comes out
For anyone not in that theatre, the wait now has firm dates. Netflix is preparing an Imax release on November 25, before the film lands on the streamer on December 23.
The project has drawn attention since it was revealed that Pitt and Fincher were teaming up on a story Tarantino had originally wanted to direct himself. Fincher has said he cut 60 pages from Tarantino's script after reading a first draft that ran 230 pages, and that the finished version is around two and a half hours long.
Alongside Pitt, the cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Peter Weller, Matt Groove, JB Tadena, Corey Fogelmanis and Karren Karagulian.
