On April Fools’ Day 2025, The Hollywood Reporter dropped a story claiming that David Fincher was directing a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel written by Quentin Tarantino, starring Brad Pitt. The story was so wild that people genuinely thought it was a joke. It was not a joke. The Adventures of Cliff Booth is very real, it wrapped filming in January 2026, and it dropped a surprise teaser during Super Bowl LX in February that had the entire internet at a loss for words.
How Did This Even Happen?
Here’s the beautiful, chaotic origin story. After Tarantino scrapped his long-in-development tenth and supposedly ‘final’ film, The Movie Critic, he couldn’t stop writing about Cliff Booth — the Oscar-winning stuntman character Brad Pitt brought to life in the 2019 original. The Cliff Booth material kept evolving, kept deepening, until Tarantino had something too good to leave in a drawer. So he did the unthinkable: he let someone else direct his screenplay for the first time since True Romance in 1993.
That someone was David Fincher, who already had Brad Pitt on speed-dial from three of cinema’s greatest movies together — Se7en, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Pitt actually approached Fincher himself. Netflix, where Fincher has a first-look deal, swooped in and wrote a check reportedly in the region of $200 million. Tarantino pocketed $20 million just to write the script. Everyone got exactly what they wanted, and we get to watch it.
What’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth Actually About?
Details are being guarded like state secrets, which is exactly the kind of energy you’d expect from the combined forces of Tarantino and Fincher. What we do know: The Adventures of Cliff Booth is set in the 1970s — a later period than the original’s 1969 setting — and follows Booth as he’s now operating as a Hollywood studio fixer. Think less charming stuntman, more complicated man navigating a world he can’t quite retire from.
The Super Bowl teaser showed Cliff icing his knee at a bar, strutting through a film set, and behind the wheel of a derby car on a dirt track. There are shots of cigarettes, middle fingers, censored guns, and enough retro atmosphere to make your bell-bottoms ache. Most intriguingly, there’s a shot of Cliff placing an Oscar on his desk — a wink at Pitt winning his real-life supporting actor Oscar for the original role. Timothy Olyphant returns as James Stacy, Cliff’s 1969 neighbor, now presumably his partner in whatever trouble they’re getting into.
A Dream Team That Has No Business Existing
Let’s just pause and appreciate what this is. Quentin Tarantino writing. David Fincher directing. Brad Pitt starring — in a role he won an Oscar for. That’s not a movie, that’s a once-in-a-generation alignment of talent that should statistically not be possible. Tarantino said on his podcast: ‘I think me and David Fincher are the two best directors. So the idea that David Fincher actually wants to adapt my work shows a level of seriousness towards my work that needs to be taken into account.’
The supporting cast reads like Fincher pulled his favorite actors from every previous film he’s ever made. Holt McCallany — FBI Agent Tench from Mindhunter — is here. Carla Gugino is here. Elizabeth Debicki, coming off her landmark portrayal of Princess Diana in The Crown, steps into whatever mysterious role she’s playing. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Scott Caan, and Peter Weller complete an ensemble that has no weak links.
No Leonardo DiCaprio — And Why That Actually Makes Sense
Yes, Leo was approached to reprise Rick Dalton in a cameo. Yes, he turned it down. And while the internet mourned the loss of a Pitt-DiCaprio reunion, it actually makes creative sense. The Adventures of Cliff Booth is not a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — it’s an episode. A standalone chapter in a larger mythology. Booth’s story was always separate from Dalton’s. This film gets to exist entirely in Cliff’s headspace, and that’s a genuinely exciting creative choice.
Netflix is reportedly eyeing a summer 2026 release with a theatrical run before streaming. With Erik Messerschmidt — Fincher’s trusted cinematographer from Mank and The Killer — shooting on location across Los Angeles, this is the kind of film that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Mark your calendars. Clear your summer. Cliff Booth is back, and he is not coming quietly.
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