Brad Pitt Joins Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’
Acclaimed director’s penultimate film deals with the Manson family’s 1969 murder of Sharon Tate
March 1, 2018
Quentin Tarantino’s Manson family murder movie just got a title, a logline, and yet another A-list actor.
Brad Pitt will join Leonardo DiCaprio in Tarantino’s potentially penultimate film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” according to multiple reports. Pitt will play a struggling stunt double for DiCaprio, who lives adjacent to ill-fated starlet Sharon Tate.
Tarantino released a description for his ninth film, too, describing it as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), former star of a Western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor … Sharon Tate.”
“I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was 7 years old,” he added. “I’m very excited to tell this story of an L.A., and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff.”
Tarantino has previously promised to retire after his tenth film, which would leave just one more after “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” When he visited the Stern Show in 2012, however, ahead of the release of his Oscar-winning Jamie Foxx and DiCaprio film “Django Unchained,” he suggested those retirement plans might not be set in stone: “If I’m 67 and I can still make a movie and I come up with a cool story, maybe I’ll do it. But I don’t want to be an old man, film director, past his prime. I don’t want to be a director whose best work is behind him,” he told Howard. “I want my best work to be in front of me.
Tarantino has also discussed his film’s new star in a previous Stern Show visit. In 2009, the director told Howard he and Pitt became fast friends after filming “Basterds,” saying the two had even smoked hash together.
Tate was 26 years old, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and married to director Roman Polanski on Aug. 9, 1969 when she and four others were murdered in her Hollywood mansion by the Manson family. Sony Pictures plans to release “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” on Aug. 9, 2019, exactly 50 years to the day Tate was killed.
