Quentin Tarantino has admitted that he felt he was letting Brad Pitt down when he decided not to direct the Cliff Booth sequel himself.
The filmmaker made the comments in an interview with Empire, discussing The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth.
Tarantino wrote a script for the film but chose not to make it his tenth and final movie.
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Pitt, he said, was “the one I felt I was really letting down when I didn’t do it.” He added: “I felt bad about that.”
Pitt won an Oscar for playing Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and both men were keen to continue the character’s story.
The actor was disappointed he would not be returning to the role under Tarantino’s direction.
Pitt then asked David Fincher, who directed him in Seven, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, to read Tarantino’s script.
Fincher agreed, as long as Tarantino approved. He ended up “smitten” with the project.
Tarantino said the fact that Fincher spent “a year-and-a-half” working on his material “said a lot about what was on the page.”
The film is set in 1977 Hollywood, where Cliff Booth works as a studio fixer.
The cast includes Pitt, Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Scott Caan and Timothy Olyphant.
It opens exclusively in IMAX on 25 November and arrives on Netflix a month later.
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