Brad Pitt’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Sequel Has a Release Date, and Quentin Tarantino Just Announced a Companion Novel
Quentin Tarantino’s long-gestating Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follow-up finally has a full shape. Netflix confirmed that The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, directed by David Fincher from a Tarantino script, hits an exclusive two-week IMAX run on November 25 before streaming on Netflix December 23. And on September 15, Tarantino added a second act to the rollout: a companion novel called The Adventures of Cliff Booth, arriving December 8 from Harper.
What The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth Is About
The film is a standalone sequel to 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, picking up in 1977, eight years after the original’s 1969 setting. Brad Pitt reprises Cliff Booth, the stuntman and Hollywood fixer whose easygoing menace won Pitt an Academy Award the first time around, now navigating a studio system that looks nothing like the one he grew up in. The supporting cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Peter Weller, Timothy Olyphant, and Holt McCallany.
Brad Pitt produces alongside Ceán Chaffin, David Heyman, Stacey Sher, and Tarantino himself, with a reported $200 million budget that makes it the most expensive film either Fincher or Tarantino has ever made. Production ran from July 2025 through mid-January 2026.
Why Tarantino Wrote It, But Isn’t Directing It
Tarantino has spent years saying he’ll retire after his tenth film, and he’s explained that directing Cliff Booth’s story himself didn’t feel like the way to close out that run. Discussing the project, he admitted the idea of returning to familiar ground “just kind of unenthused” him, adding, “I’ve got to not know what I’m doing again.” Pitt brought the script to Fincher instead, and Tarantino has been vocal about trusting him with it, since Fincher wanting to adapt his work is, in Tarantino’s view, its own kind of compliment. Because Tarantino only wrote The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth rather than directing it, it’s still an open question among fans whether it will count toward his self-imposed ten-film limit.
Brad Pitt returns as Cliff Booth in David Fincher’s Netflix sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
A New Novel Joins the Story
Alongside the film, Harper announced Tarantino’s prose take on the same character, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, out December 8. It’s a follow-up to his 2021 novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and it lets Tarantino expand on Cliff’s backstory, including the wartime past he’s mentioned wanting to explore, on the page rather than on screen. In a statement released through Harper, Tarantino said he “can’t wait for audiences to see and read Cliff Booth’s further adventures.” Sharp-eyed readers will notice the novel’s title doesn’t quite match the film’s: The Adventures of Cliff Booth was actually the movie’s own working title before Netflix expanded it to The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth when the final title was confirmed in August.
When You Can Watch It, and Read It
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth plays IMAX screens exclusively starting November 25 before landing on Netflix December 23, with the novel following five days earlier on December 8. Netflix already streams in Austria and Germany, so Gamersuniverse readers won’t need an extra subscription to catch Cliff Booth’s return once it arrives.
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Picture Source: Netflix
