Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' Has Pitt And DiCaprio, But No Cruise Or Robbie

Well, it looks like Sony has gotten over their cold feet about producing and distributing Quintin Tarantino’s new movie. I wouldn’t have blamed Sony for having second thoughts given the budget (reportedly around $100 million), the declining theatrical audience for outright adult movies and Tarantino’s self-inflicted controversies over an unsafe vehicular stunt that injured Uma Thurman on the set of Kill Bill and unearthed comments he made defending Roman Polanski in on The Howard Stern Show back in 2003. If that budget comes to pass, the period piece Hollywood drama will have to be Tarantino’s second-biggest global grosser ever just to make a profit. But, as announced last night via press release, Sony is going for it.

We now have a title and the first two big casting announcements. To wit, the 1969-set Hollywood drama, which will tangentially involve the infamous Tate-Labianca Murders, is titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, an obvious reference to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in The West, which turns 50 years old this year. And the film will concern a former star of a western TV show (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double (Brad Pitt) as they struggle in a rapidly changing industry. And, yes, Sharon Tate (possibly played by Margot Robbie) will be a major character, although there is no official confirmation to what extent Roman Polanski (Tate’s husband at the time of her murder) or Charles Manson will play into the story. The film will open Aug. 9, 2019, or the same weekend where Inglorious Basterds debuted a decade prior.

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The good news is that Brad Pitt’s Inglorious Basterds earned $321 million worldwide (on a $70m budget) back in 2009 and Django Unchained (where DiCaprio played the heavy against Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz) earned $425m worldwide on a $100m budget in 2012/2013. Heck, DiCaprio’s last film, the seemingly less-than-commercial The Revenant (a 2.5-hour, R-rated endurance fest/survival story in an unforgiving forest) earned an obscene $532m worldwide for Fox in 2015/2016. The bad news is that Tarantino’s last flick, the mostly action-free The Hateful Eight, earned just $155m worldwide on a $44m budget in 2015/2016. And, at a glance, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood isn’t quite as explicitly commercial/crowd-pleasing as Tarantino’s two biggest hits.

I’m looking forward to it, and I’m assuming it will be pretty good, but I fear for its commercial reception in this Netflix-and-Chill era. And, yeah, with the caveat that the cast is not remotely finalized, I’m a little disappointed not to see Tom Cruise’s name in that initial press release. He and Margot Robbie were the other two names tossed about for key roles, and the notion of Cruise playing in the Tarantino sandbox is beyond exciting. Still, maybe he’s still in negotiations for one role (Polanski?) or another (Manson?) so we can keep our fingers crossed on that score. No, I’m don’t necessarily want a movie with Charles Manson as a major character (I’m expecting something closer to Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam), but I’d be willing to let that go if we ended up with Cruise as the infamous cult leader/murderer.

Come what may, this is another case of Sony producing or distributing an unapologetic adult-skewing multiplex release, even at a time when such a thing is the riskiest possible project. Say what you will about their success with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or their struggles with a Spider-Man spinoff series without Spider-Man, but they also released Only the Brave, Roman Israel, Esq. and All the Money in the World to mostly empty theaters. As always, if you want stuff like this at a theater near you, you have to make the effort when it opens at a theater near you. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opens Aug. 9, 2019. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.