Cinephiles can (potentially) rejoice, as “the big three” have confirmed the unfortunately April Fool’s Day-set smoke surrounding some good-old tinsel town trade fireworks.
Quentin Tarantino’s long-rumored “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” follow-up may see the light of day yet—and with a Red Apple-branded twist, of course.
Widely accepted as a moviemaking unicorn amongst his peers, the 2-time Academy Award winner for the “Pulp Fiction” (1994) and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) screenplays has few true contemporaries.
Enter: David Fincher—a fellow elite-class filmmaker for the past three decades strong, and director-only visionary behind such classics as 1995’s “Se7en,” 1999’s “Fight Club,” and 2014’s “Gone Girl,” among others.
The Hollywood Reporter, which credits The Playlist for cracking the case first, wrote that Tarantino and Fincher’s mutual friend and collaborator, Brad Pitt, introduced the former’s abandoned script to the latter.
Pitt won a supporting Oscar as Cliff Booth, the badass ‘Hollywood’ stuntman and “gofer” to Leonardo DiCaprio’s past-his-TV-cowboy-prime Rick Dalton. The pair try to reclaim their careers and lives while the pre-notoriety Manson Family looms at every 1969 LA corner.
Tarantino first expanded upon Booth’s “cool guy with perhaps something mega to hide” lore in his “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” 2021 novelization, and next in his shelved directorial contemplation that reportedly moved Pitt beyond expectation.
This is not to be confused with “The Movie Critic,” which Tarantino also teased as his next, tenth, and final effort before growing permanently displeased with his self-perceived fully baked, maybe even too baked, burst of creativity.
The canceled project was to follow a debauchery-driven film cynic penning raucous takedowns with vintage Howard Stern eccentricity for a 1970s porno magazine.
Falling out of love with this particular labor as his last dance, Tarantino quickly became obsessed with a refusal to let Cliff Booth acid trip off into that fairytale-made-good night via ambulance ride.
He ultimately went back to a different drawing board—not for once expecting someone of Fincher’s caliber would come packing his own designs for Tarantino’s foremost ambitions.
This go-around, Pitt would lead, should the Netflix—where Fincher is under overall contract—acquisition of Tarantino-owned characters and a Sony-owned property go through. Reports circulating suggest that if all goes according to plan, Fincher and Pitt will shoot as early as late summer.
Tarantino once famously told Charlie Rose that, though he believes David Fincher’s Founding of Facebook frenzy “The Social Network” to be the best film of the 2010s, he and Fincher can’t be considered in the same category. Tarantino is most often a writer-director, whereas Fincher exclusively adapts scripts penned by others.
Much to the chagrin of the impatient sector of his fanbase, Tarantino has expressed his desire to retire after “No. 10.” However, he has also played fast and loose with guidelines he's devised in the past—go figure, the ultimate rule-breaker breaking his own rules.
Tarantino considers the split “Kill Bill” volumes as one bloody affair, just as they were shot, to make his 10-and-out mission stand tall. Per this logic, 1993’s “True Romance,” which he wrote, is thereby disqualified—despite it obviously being a (somewhat) semi-autobiographical, madcap runaway adventure-fantasy with Christian Slater in the role of a young QT.
With a “Once Upon a Time” return, Tarantino can kick three vintage hits out of the 50s diner jukebox for the price of one. He can (1) hold his last directorial work until his toddler children are old enough to appreciate on-set memories, as he recently professed; (2) put an empathic bow on a historically fictional world our historically frictional one is not yet ready to bid farewell to; and (3) reward eager beavers with six-years overdue big-screen QT prose, in doing so.
If he is going for the symmetrical career arc here, re: “True Romance” being unleashed between his first two directorial efforts (“Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction”), and the hypothetical “Twice Upon a Time” aiming to release between his final two, then expect the dogs to be completely off the reservoir by the time his last iconic swan has sung.
As enticing as this all may seem, and one can certainly dream, you can’t really have Cliff Booth without his partner-in-crime-prevention, Rick Dalton. It remains to be seen whether Leo—who is in talks to shoot an Evil Knievel biopic with Damien Chazelle this summer—will return in The Continuing Misadventures of Cliff Booth, where the journey is somewhere in that movie magic middle-ground between laid-back and Banalaland.
The endgame destination, if they take this route? A best-saved-for-last reunion with a buddy who was always more than a brother, and a little less than a wife.
Primarily adept in the serious crime genre (“Zodiac,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), it is important to note two-fold: (1) Fincher’s last film, “Mank,” which tracks the mayhem making of “Citizen Kane,” was as much of an “inside baseball” lens unto Old 1930s Hollywood as “Once Upon a Time” is dialed into the late 60s emergence of New Hollywood culture.
And (2) Fincher’s last film with Pitt before their “World War Z 2” pursuits perished in early pre-production was “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” This is undoubtedly his most Robert Zemeckian/“Forrest Gumpian” work to date.
The same can be said for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” as applied to Tarantino’s filmography. Ergo: Fincher just may be the perfect man for the job.
Though, to be frank, Rick and Cliff didn't just witness or make history.
They up and changed it.
Here’s hoping they get to once more sooner rather than later—and that they bring bagels for the ride.