When I first heard Brad Pitt was returning as Cliff Booth in a 2026 release connected to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, my biggest question was about Quentin Tarantino. The filmmaker has spent years talking about stopping after 10 movies, so handing one of his characters and an entire script over to somebody else seemed pretty surprising. Apparently, the explanation involves Pitt, David Fincher and one extremely productive plane ride.
Speaking with Esquire, Pitt explained how The Adventures of Cliff Booth came back from the dead after Tarantino decided he did not want the project to become his final movie. He knew Tarantino had a finished script and started wondering whether his longtime collaborator Fincher might respond to it. He explained:
