David Fincher Scrapped 60 Pages Of Tarantino’s ‘Cliff Booth’ Script: “It Was Essentially Two Movies”

David Fincher directed The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follow-up written by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt.

With Tarantino penning the script, Fincher had to make some sacrifices and cut 60 pages.

“The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies,” Fincher told Empire in a joint interview with Tarantino. “Somewhere in there was the Venn diagram of what Brad wanted to do, what I want to do, what Quentin wanted to do. Not ‘want to do,’ but the areas we would focus on.”

With the cuts, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, which follows Pitt reprising his role as stuntman Cliff Booth, ended up having a runtime of around 2 hours and 20 minutes.

The film, which is slated to premiere in Imax on November 25, followed by the Netflix release on December 23, also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Peter Weller.

Tarantino explained that he doesn’t think of TFMAOCB as a “hangout movie at all,” adding, “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was a hangout movie, but you know you’re going to Cielo Drive (site of the Manson murders). It has this force, thus I didn’t need a lot of plot. This script was very different.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered in 2019 and was written and directed by Tarantino. The film featured a cast that included Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Timothy Olyphant, Mike Moh, Margaret Qualley, Al Pacino, Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern and Luke Perry.