Rick Dalton may have ridden off into his Italian sunset, but the universe he shared with Cliff Booth is still expanding — and now it’s doing so without him. In a new career-spanning interview with Deadline, Leonardo DiCaprio officially confirmed he won’t be appearing in David Fincher’s upcoming Netflix film “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” the feature-length spin-off centered on Brad Pitt’s laid-back stuntman from Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
When The Playlist first broke the news back in April that Fincher would direct Brad Pitt in a follow-up to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” from a Tarantino script, our reporting already indicated that a DiCaprio/Rick Dalton return was doubtful. Netflix snapped up the project, Pitt officially signed on as Cliff Booth, and the movie now known as “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” instantly became one of the year’s buzziest packages — with DiCaprio’s status left as the one big unanswered question.
While some outlets reported that DiCaprio would eventually appear, Deadline finally asked him outright if he was ever going to be part of the Fincher project built around Pitt’s stuntman-turned-Hollywood fixer. And DiCaprio acknowledged that’s not happening. “There were some talks about it early on. Ultimately, I cannot wait to see the Cliff Booth story, but I’m not in it,” he said of the ‘Cliff Booth’ movie. “I think David Fincher’s the perfect man for the job. Quentin is a huge fan of his work, I’m a huge fan of his work, and there’s nobody better to carry on that lineage and tell that story. I think it’s the next phase of Cliff Booth’s life. I’m excited to see it.”
Is that the end of the line for DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton character? Well, after “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Tarantino spent years talking up “Bounty Law,” the in-universe black-and-white Western that made Rick Dalton a TV star. He told the press in 2020 that “as far as the ‘Bounty Law’ shows, I want to do that, but it will take me a year and a half,” later boasting, “I ended up writing five half-hour episodes. So I’ll do them, and I will direct all of them.”
But so far, no series has materialized. And given DiCaprio’s quote is nearly $20 million a picture (see how much he was paid for “One Battle After Another”), doing a deal for a TV series seems cost-prohibitive if not totally impossible.
“The Adventures of Cliff Booth” stars Brad Pitt and Timothy Olyphant reprising their respective “Once Upon A Time On Hollywood” roles as Cliff Booth and James Stacy, alongside Scott Caan, Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Holt McCallany, and JB Tadena. Tarantino wrote the script, Fincher directs, and a 2026 premiere date on Netflix is expected; however, don’t be surprised if it’s closer to the end of the year. Some outlets reported that Fincher was ready to shoot his “Squid Game” spin-off series in February of next year, but that’s dead wrong. ‘Cliff Booth’ shoots through December and still has to make time for pickups and reshoots in early 2026. The film will be in post-production for most of next year. [via Deadline]
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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