Tarantino Shows the Opening 17 Minutes of Cliff Booth Sequel at AFI Fest

Quentin Tarantino screened the first 17 minutes of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth on Friday night, 23 October, at AFI Fest in Los Angeles. The clip came during a Q&A and screening of his 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Deadline reported it as the first public look at the new film.

The event took place at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Tarantino wrote the script, and David Fincher directed. Fincher has said he cut 60 pages from Tarantino's script, which ran 230 pages in the first draft he read. The finished cut runs about two and a half hours.

Brad Pitt returns as Cliff Booth, the stuntman and sidekick to Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton. Pitt won an Oscar for the role in the 2019 film. This time the story jumps to 1977, eight years after Cliff's encounter with the Manson family in 1969. The cast also includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Peter Weller.

The release plan is set out too. Netflix plans a theatrical run on 25 November in IMAX, the large-screen format, before the film reaches streaming on 23 December, according to Deadline. A theatrical run means a stretch in cinemas before home viewing, and the November date gives audiences a few weeks in theatres before the film arrives on the service.

Tarantino has another project on the way. His stage play The Popinjay Cavalier opens in London's West End next spring, with Sacha Baron Cohen in the cast. Previews begin on 23 February at the Phoenix Theatre, and the show opens on 18 March.

Anyone who wants to revisit the earlier film has options. AFI Silver in Los Angeles lists Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 70mm from Saturday, 21 November. Netflix has also published a trailer page for the new film, so the official footage is already online for viewers who want a first look at the trailer before the cinema date.

The Friday event was a reveal for a film most viewers have not yet seen in full. The clip gave the public its first sense of how the Cliff Booth story continues, and it put a date on the film's move to cinemas and then to Netflix.