Everything We Learned From the Latest Cliff Booth Trailer

“Heard the story about Bruce Lee getting his ass kicked by a stuntman?” It's been a year or so since news broke that Brad Pitt would reprise the role of that stuntman, Cliff Booth, in a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel directed by David Fincher, and more than six months since that sequel's first teaser rolled out during the Super Bowl. Now, at long last, the officially titled The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth has just received a new 90-second trailer that recycles much of that initial footage, while leaking some new tidbits, and a Netflix press release that offers a fuller plot synopsis with fresh character details.Pitt and Fincher's fourth team-up, which hits IMAX theaters worldwide for a two-week engagement on November 25 before bowing on Netflix on December 23, is also a basically-unprecedented cinematic event: a handoff between two of the best directors of their generation (Fincher is seven months older), with one master stepping in to take the directorial reins of a sequel written by the other. Tarantino reportedly sat next to Fincher on set for most of the shoot, a detail that led some fans to accuse Tarantino of finding a loophole in his stubborn self-imposed 10-film mandate by “shadow directing” the film, and that it will be a Fincher movie in name alone. But this conspiracy theory ignores that Fincher has brought his longtime team to the project with him, including director of photography Erik Messerschmidt, whose signature shadows are apparent from the first frame of the trailer, and production designer Donald Burt Graham.With some imagination, the project is an intuitive fit that makes sense for both collaborators. It’s not a stretch for Tarantino, who rose up the Hollywood ranks first as both a screenwriter and uncredited script doctor, writing Bonnie-and-Clyde flavored love-on-the-run capers and inserting comic book lore into nuclear submarine thrillers, although it’s been thirty years since he wrote a script he didn’t direct (1996’s neo-exploitation vampire-stripper classic From Dusk Til Dawn.) Tarantino has also always been up for a bizarre experiment, like directing a Mother’s Day episode of Must See TV, a two-part CSI, or his 2007 double feature with Robert Rodriguez.Lately, in what may be an attempt to stay busy doing literally anything except making his tenth and allegedly final movie, he’s penned an homage to mass-market paperback literature with the novelization of OUATIH (published in 2021, several years after the film) and published a collection of movie criticism, Cinema Speculation. It was recently announced he’ll follow up his first novelization set in this universe with another, with the slightly augmented title The Adventures of Cliff Booth, which will be published on December 8th by Harper Collins. Tarantino’s next project as a writer-director will be a stage farce called “The Popinjay Cavalier,” described as a “swashbuckling comedy” set in 1830s Europe. It premieres on the West End in London in 2027 with…Sacha Baron Cohen set to star.The master technician David Fincher, on the other hand, has never fashioned himself as a writer. He never takes credit on screenplays, though he works closely with screenwriters to help shape the narratives for all his films. In the past, he has been best served by taking on writers with strong, distinct voices and editing them to dig out the best, smartest versions of themselves in the scripts they write for him. But in adapting a Tarantino screenplay, he’s taking on the strongest authorial voice of his career—and maybe his greatest challenge.Although they're very different directors stylistically, Fincher and Tarantino share an affinity for old-Hollywood lore, something Tarantino showcased in the first installment of this series, a movie obsessed with recreating the context of its moment, from its LA streetscapes painstakingly dressed with period-accurate movie billboards from the summer of ‘69 to the crackling diegetic music, ads, and DJ shpiel floating out of cars and radios into the air. “Alfonso Cuaron had Roma and Mexico City, 1970,” Tarantino said at the time. “I had LA and 1969.”The spark for the story began with the character of Cliff Booth, a character inspired in part by the close friendship Tarantino observed between Kurt Russell and his longtime stunt double on the set of Death Proof 20 years ago. In long bull sessions, Russell—who shares Tarantino’s intimate knowledge of and love for Hollywood history—would regale the director with stories about drunken, shady, seemingly indestructible stuntmen who worked alongside his dad, the Bonanza actor Bing Russell. This inspired Tarantino, who began sketching short stories about an actor and his stuntman buddy and tinkering with them between other projects, dutifully returning to the story again and again over the course of 15 years before finally making the film and releasing it in 2019.OUATIH was a personal film for Tarantino, tinged with the romance of a kid sitting in front of a black-and-white TV, wondering what goes on behind the scenes of his favorite after-school Western. Judging by the look and feel of the teaser trailer, with its glimpses of billboards for Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Black Sunday, this one is tapping into the energy of late ‘70s Los Angeles. This is confirmed in the press release. “What was once a fairytale is now a crime story,” the copy reads, promising the franchise is giving way to a grittier, uglier look at Hollywood’s underbelly, with Fincher’s dramatic lighting providing a literal stark contrast to Tarantino’s sun-dappled vision of an idyllic 1969 in SoCal.In the new trailer, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth sees Cliff washed out of the film industry. His slamming of Bruce Lee into a car door has passed into legend and he’s stuck jobbing as a bartender at a dive with a mud pit, and as a projectionist at Tarantino’s New Beverly- presumably to save Netflix on production budget. But he also picks up work as “a fixer” and is drawn into a plot, after being enlisted by Elizabeth Debicki and Scott Caan, that pulls him into the smutty underworld of L.A.’s Carter-era entertainment industry, populated exclusively by beautiful women and shady characters perfectly cast for a classic Hollywood noir.With the global IMAX run rapidly approaching, we’ll continue to monitor the situation and update this post as more news leaks out. In the meantime, here’s a rundown of the announced The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth cast, with some semi-educated guesses at who’s playing who via press release and context clues.Confirmed CastBrad PittONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Brad Pitt, 2019. ph: Andrew Cooper / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection Andrew Cooper/Everett CollectionYou may remember him from being Brad Pitt. Pitt, we can say with certainty, plays Cliff Booth (fan-theorized to be both the son of Aldo Raine from Inglorious Basterds and the father of Floyd from True Romance, if you’re into nerding out on largely-irrelevant Tarantino interconnected-universe shit). In the first teaser, his wardrobe hasn’t changed much, but he has added a mustache. The trailer opens on Cliff icing his wound with frozen peas in a walk-in freezer, suggesting that Cliff still feels the wound he incurred the night of the Manson home invasion at the Dalton estate.He’s jobbing around the margins of the entertainment industry in LA, bartending and working at the New Bev, when he’s enlisted to help solve a problem for a television star.Timothy OlyphantJustin Tallis/Getty ImagesOlyphant revealed on Conan O’Brien’s podcast in August that he’s reprising the role of Jim Stacy, a real actor from the 60s who starred as Johnny Madrid in the CBS Western series Lancer, which in the OUATIH universe featured a memorable guest-star turn from Rick Dalton. Besides Cliff, Olyphant’s Stacy is the only confirmed returning character from the first film; in the teaser he’s sporting what looks like his Alien: Earth white-blond look and wearing a suit in the club. His slightly stiff walk may be a story point: In 1973, the real Stacy was struck by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend; she died, and Stacy lost an arm and a leg, although he continued acting through the early ‘90s.Elizabeth DebickiDave Benett/Getty ImagesDebicki (Tenet, MaXXXine) plays talent agent Karen Crosby, who employs the actor’s native Australian accent. Her scene from the first trailer with Booth has the look and feel of a first-act moment from a noir film, the part where a private investigator is enlisted to take on what sounds like a simple enough job.Yahya Abdul-Mateen IIAxelle/Bauer-GriffinThe Wonder Man and Man on Fire star shows up in the trailer as Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison- a Richard Roundtree dead ringer- but the football player turned screen star’s backstory appears to be modeled after Jim Brown’s.Scott CaanFox/Getty ImagesCaan, looking eerily like his father James, plays TV star Charlie Peters, an action hero who along with Debicki’s Karen Crosby appears to be enlisting Cliff for some kind of job, impressed by his history of actual, “alleged” murder.Carla GuginoCarla Gugino at the "Heads of State" world premiere held at Alice Tully Hall on June 24, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)John Nacion/Getty ImagesPlaying Charlie Peters’ wife Toni, who stuns on a Malibu beachfront patio with a goblet of white wine.Corey FogelmanisCorey Nickols/Getty ImagesFogelmanis (Ma, Girl Meets World) appears in one of the most interesting shots in the trailer, crawling backwards down a ramp towards a movie screen in a theater.JB TadenaAmy Sussman/Getty ImagesTadena and Groove play The Verdusco Brothers, “mysterious gangsters causing mayhem across the city.”Meta alert #2: Tadena is probably best known for his role in The CW's Kung Fu, a re-imagining of the 1970s series that starred Kill Bill's David Carradine. In the teaser, we see him wielding a sledgehammer with partner.Karren KaragulianEverett CollectionThe Anora standout and longtime Sean Baker collaborator plays Charlie, who we see holding a Schoolhouse Rock bookbag and apparently enlists Cliff to obtain a briefcase full of cash.Lauren GlazierPreviously seen in Fincher’s Mindhunter and Gone Girl; she’s the officiant in what we’re assuming is a mud-wrestling match.Peter WellerSaban International/Everett CollectionIt’s Robocop! Who we see getting out of his car below an ad for the Normandie casino, a famous LA card room.Barry LivingstonHOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - JULY 20: Barry Livingston attends the opening of the Hollywood Museum's new exhibit honoring Abbott and Costello at The Hollywood Museum on July 20, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)Paul Archuleta/Getty ImagesAnother fun bit of texture-as-text casting: Livingston was a child actor who appeared on My Three Sons from 1965 through 1972. He’s not in the trailer, but according to Rewind Magazine, he told the audience at a nostalgia-convention panel in September that he’ll be playing a “disco kingpin” in Fincher’s film.Holt McCallanyNEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 02: Holt McCallany attends "The Amateur" world premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 02, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)Jamie McCarthy/Getty ImagesFincher’s Mindhunter collaborator is the most interesting question mark as of now; he’s been announced all over the Internet as a Booth cast member, but he’s not in the trailer and was still claiming as of last August that he’s not in it. Remember—until it’s unspooling on a big screen in front of you, you can’t trust any news surrounding this movie.