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Brad Pitt’s return as his Oscar-winning Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood character Cliff Booth will not be shown by certain cinema chains following a disagreement with Netflix.
The streaming giant is behind The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, directed by David Fincher from a script by Quentin Tarantino. The film is set to be released in theaters November 25 before arriving on Netflix December 23.
However, cinema chains Cinemark and Regal have both declined to show the film because of how short a release window they’ve been offered by the streamer.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble said during an earnings call: “The Cliff Booth situation is an interesting one.”
He continued: “We book all of our films on a case-by-case situation. In that particular situation, we always look at things through a long-term lens and how certain precedents and things we might do could affect longer-term industry dynamics. In this particular case, we don’t believe the proposed release model is constructive for the broader theatrical ecosystem, and it’s not aligned [with] what’s of the greatest interest in our theaters.”
Brad Pitt returns as the titular stuntman in Netflix’s ‘The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth’ (Netflix)
The Independent has contacted Netflix for comment.
The recently released trailer for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth had many fans complaining about the murky quality of the footage.
The film is set in 1977, eight years after the events of the first movie, and will follow Pitt’s character as he works as a Hollywood fixer.
However, fans are already disappointed, criticizing the trailer footage for its appearance. “They f***ed up using dark tinted camera effect. Not sure why they keep doing this,” one fan wrote on X.
Another user sarcastically commented: “I was still able to see something. Please work on the grading and make it darker before it releases.”
Someone else posted a meme from the original movie, claiming that the new trailer could be summed up by a line uttered by Bruce Dern as George Spahn: “Can’t see s***.”
Another suggested: “Please Fincher, hire a gaffer to crank up the light level and hire a [Director of Photography] that’s not color blind.”
Tarantino has also announced that alongside the new movie, he will be publishing a novelization of the story, titled The Adventures of Cliff Booth.
“Can’t wait for audiences to see and read Cliff Booth’s further adventures,” Tarantino said in a statement released by publisher HarperCollins.
Tarantino previously published a novelization of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which definitively answered a mystery that had been left open by the original film.
In the movie, Booth is implied to have potentially killed his wife, though it is not confirmed. In the book, however, Tarantino clearly stated that Booth got away with murder several times.
“The second time was when Cliff killed his wife two years earlier,” he wrote.