Due August 2019, the latest project from US director Quentin Tarantino is filling out its cast with half a dozen new announcements, after Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were installed as the movie’s leads.
Three years after the release of “The Hateful Eight,” Quentin Tarantino is preparing “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
It’s to be his first film produced by Sony Pictures, having abandoned The Weinstein Company following the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandals.
Taking place during the late 1960s, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” follows TV actor (DiCaprio) and his stuntman (Pitt) as they try to become famous.
Their escapade coincides with the 1969 Manson Family murders, during which five people, including US actress and model Sharon Tate, who was the wife of French-Polish director Roman Polanski, were killed by members of Charles Manson’s group at the Polanski-Tate home.
While stuntman Cliff Booth and TV Western actor Rick Dalton are fictitious, Damian Lewis of “Billions” and “Homeland” will play US actor Steve McQueen, and Dakota Fanning is to be Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.
Also named to the cast have been Emile Hirsch (“Into the Wild”) as Tate’s friend and celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, and Nicholas Hammond (“The Sound of Music,” Australian war drama series “Gallipoli”) as actor-director Sam Wanamaker (“The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”).
Luke Perry of “Riverdale” and “Beverly Hills, 90210” is to play Scott Lancer, whose name corresponds to that of a character on 1968-70 TV western “Lancer.”
As Pitt and DiCaprio’s roles imply, the movie blends fictitious and real events.
Clifton Collins Jr. (“Thief,” “Capote”) has been named as Ernesto The Mexican Vaquero while Keith Jefferson returns from “The Hateful Eight” and “Django Unchained” to play a character named Land Pirate Keith.
Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya,” and opposite DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street”) was previously cast as Sharon Tate, and Burt Reynolds as Charles Manson’s landlord George Spahn.
Timothy Olyphant, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell and Zoé Bell had already joined the film in unspecified roles. All but Olyphant (of “Justified”) had worked on “The Hateful Eight” if not additional Tarantino films.
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is expected August 9, 2019.
