Hollywood has always been a town where secrets are currency, reputations are fragile, and the right person can make even the most inconvenient problems disappear. And if there’s one man who knows how to navigate its seedier corners, it’s Cliff Booth.
Seven years after Brad Pitt won an Academy Award for his effortlessly cool portrayal of the stuntman in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the actor is slipping back into one of his most beloved roles for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. Only this time, Tarantino is handing the directorial reins to David Fincher, making for a particularly intriguing marriage of two filmmakers with very different cinematic sensibilities.
The newly unveiled trailer offers a first glimpse at this unexpected continuation, transporting audiences to Los Angeles in 1977, eight years after Cliff’s rather memorable confrontation with the Manson family. The Hollywood of 1969, with its fading movie stars, countercultural anxieties and nostalgic promise, has given way to something altogether more cynical. The fairy tale is over, but Cliff, it seems, is still very much in business.
No longer relying solely on his stuntman credentials, Cliff now makes ends meet working as a bartender and projectionist, while putting his particular set of skills to use as a Hollywood fixer. Murder, blackmail, theft and extortion are all part of the landscape, and when the entertainment industry’s rich and powerful find themselves in situations that can’t exactly be resolved through conventional means, Cliff is the sort of man they call.
His latest assignment begins with talent agent Karen Crosby (Elizabeth Debicki), who contacts him on behalf of her client, television superstar Charlie Peters (Scott Caan), an actor whose reputation for performing his own stunts might make him an interesting counterpart to a man who once made his living doing the dangerous work for others.
From there, Cliff is drawn into an increasingly colourful collection of characters, including Charlie’s perceptive wife Toni (Carla Gugino), professional football champion turned actor Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and the mysterious Verdusco brothers, Eddie (Matt Groove) and Fernando (JB Tadena), whose criminal activities threaten to complicate an already unpredictable situation.
What makes this follow-up particularly fascinating, however, isn’t simply the opportunity to spend more time with Pitt’s charismatic creation. It’s the prospect of seeing a character so intrinsically associated with Tarantino’s filmmaking filtered through Fincher’s considerably darker, more controlled perspective.
Where Tarantino’s original film was an affectionate, revisionist love letter to a Hollywood that might have been, Fincher appears more interested in exploring the machinery operating beneath the glamour. His fascination with morally compromised characters, institutional corruption and the uncomfortable spaces between right and wrong feels especially well suited to a story about a man whose usefulness often depends on his willingness to operate outside the law.
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth is scheduled for a global release in IMAX theatres from November 25th, 2026, before arriving on Netflix from December 23rd.
