David Fincher Cut 60 Pages From Quentin Tarantino’s Cliff Booth Script
Netflix has released a slew of new images from The Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, which can be seen in the gallery below. Quentin Tarantino penned the screenplay for the film, which follows Brad Pitt’s former stuntman Cliff Booth in the years following Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
But Tarantino isn’t behind the camera this time, handing the directing reins over to David Fincher – who proceeded to cut about 60 pages from Tarantino’s screenplay.
“The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies,” Fincher told Empire Magazine. “Somewhere in there was the Venn diagram of what Brad wanted to do, what I want to do, what Quentin wanted to do. Not ‘want to do,’ but the areas we would focus on.”
The trimmed down script nevertheless resulted in a movie that runs close to two hours and 20 minutes long.
Empire also interviewed Tarantino, who explained that his script for The Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth “was very different” from the one he wrote for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. “To me, it had the flavor of an Elmore Leonard paperback: a crime-story paperback feel,” the Oscar winner said.
Fincher added that he “liked the idea that it’s a story around a bonfire. … It wasn’t about the plot as much as it was about how the participants collided with one another in the back alleys of Hollywood in 1977.”
Tarantino's full story for The Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth will be published as a novel this December and is now available to preorder.
The Pulp Fiction filmmaker also recently revealed that he’s written the screenplay for his 10th and final film, but wants to “live” a little before actually making it. In the meantime, Tarantino has penned a swashbuckler comedy stageplay titled The Popinjay Cavalier, which will be produced in London’s West End next year with Sacha Baron Cohen starring in the lead role.
The Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens in IMAX theaters globally on November 25, 2026 and launches on Netflix December 23, 2026. In addition to Brad Pitt, the film also stars Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Peter Weller.