The trailer dropped without warning on a Monday morning. Brad Pitt is back in ’70s Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino wrote the script, David Fincher directed it, and it’s coming to IMAX before it streams. This is the strangest, most exciting creative handoff in years.
On September 21, 2026, Netflix released the first full trailer for “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” — the long-rumoured, endlessly delayed follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Brad Pitt reprises the role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but almost everything else has changed.
Here’s everything we know so far.
What’s It About?
The film picks up in 1977, eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Cliff Booth has left his days as a stuntman and body double behind. He’s now working as a “studio fixer” — a man who handles the messy, occasionally extralegal problems that Hollywood’s elite can’t take to the police.
The plot kicks off when talent agent Karen Crosby, played by Elizabeth Debicki, reaches out on behalf of her client, a television star named Charlie Peters (Scott Caan) who’s known for doing his own stunts. From there, the trailer promises a collision of “violence, ambition, and desire” — murder, blackmail, theft, extortion, and car chases all entangled in Cliff’s latest job.
The trailer opens with Cliff causing chaos at the Beverly Cinema — a real-life Los Angeles theatre owned by Tarantino since 2007 — before settling into a tone that’s darker and more crime-driven than the sun-drenched, melancholic original.
Who’s In It?
Pitt leads a stacked ensemble. Timothy Olyphant reprises his role as actor James Stacy from the original film. Leonardo DiCaprio does not return as Rick Dalton — though the trailer does address his absence with a characteristically blunt Cliff Booth explanation.
The new cast includes Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison, a former professional football player turned screen star, Carla Gugino as Peters’ wife Toni, and Holt McCallany, Peter Weller, Corey Fogelmanis, and Karren Karagulian in supporting roles.
Fincher regulars populate the crew: cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, production designer Donald Graham Burt, editor Kirk Baxter, and sound designer Ren Klyce all return. Pitt produces alongside Tarantino, David Heyman, Ceán Chaffin, and Stacey Sher.
Why Tarantino Didn’t Direct It
This is the most interesting part of the story. Tarantino wrote the script. He could have directed it. He chose not to.
“I love this script, but I’m still walking down the same ground I’ve already walked,” Tarantino said on The Church of Tarantino podcast in August 2025. “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.”
Tarantino has repeatedly said his tenth feature film will be his last, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was his ninth. Rather than return to familiar territory, he handed the script to David Fincher — a director he considers one of the only peers he respects as an equal.
“I think me and David Fincher are the two best directors,” Tarantino said. “So the idea that David Fincher actually wants to adapt my work, to me, shows a level of seriousness towards my work that I think needs to be taken into account.”
The Fincher-Pitt Reunion
This is the fourth collaboration between Pitt and Fincher, following Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). It’s a partnership that has produced some of the most iconic films of the last three decades, and the trailer suggests Fincher is bringing his signature precision and darkness to Tarantino’s sun-bleached Los Angeles.
The tonal shift is deliberate. The original Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a fairy tale — a revisionist fantasy where Sharon Tate survived and the Manson family got what they deserved. The sequel, set eight years later, trades that wistfulness for something harder. Los Angeles “no longer needs a hippie-slaying stuntman,” as Media Play News put it. But it still needs a fixer.
When and Where Can You Watch It?
The release strategy is unusual for Netflix — and that’s intentional. “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” will open exclusively in IMAX theatres on November 25, 2026, for a two-week run. It will then arrive on Netflix on December 23, 2026.
It’s Netflix’s first IMAX release, a sign that the streamer is continuing to experiment with theatrical windows for its most prestigious titles.
Bonus: There’s a Novel Too
Tarantino isn’t done with Cliff Booth. Harper will publish “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” Tarantino’s novelisation of the new film, on December 8 — two weeks before the movie hits Netflix. Like his 2021 novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the book will offer Tarantino’s own version of the material, making Booth one of the rare characters the filmmaker has expanded across multiple formats.
This shouldn’t work.
A sequel to a film that already had a perfect ending. A director known for cold, clinical thrillers taking over a character defined by laid-back ’70s cool. A script written by a filmmaker who admits he didn’t want to direct it.
And yet. The trailer is electric. Pitt slips back into Cliff Booth like a worn leather jacket. Fincher’s eye for detail and Tarantino’s ear for dialogue are a combination nobody asked for but everyone should be excited about. And the IMAX release means this isn’t just another Netflix movie — it’s an event.
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth hits IMAX on November 25 and Netflix on December 23.
