Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who has the upcoming Marvel Studios series “Wonder Man” on deck at Disney+, has landed quite the meaty part in David Fincher‘s follow-up to Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” as Brad Pitt reprises the role of WWII hero and stuntman Cliff Booth.
Deadline is reporting that the actor will join other newcomers Elizabeth Debicki (“Widows”) and Scott Caan (“Ocean’s Thirteen”) in the pic. We’re still waiting on an official logline for the project, but trades are under the impression that Cliff Booth will have another career change as he becomes a Hollywood fixer (not unlike Pitt’s character from Jon Watts‘ “Wolfs”).
This new role for Abdul-Mateen II is said to be a former football player who attempts an acting career, mirroring other athletes that took on Hollywood such as Burt Reynolds (“Boogie Nights”), Carl Weathers (“Predator”), Fred Williamson (“From Dusk Till Dawn”), and the legendary Jim Brown (“The Dirty Dozen”).
While Tarantino had previously lined up “The Movie Critic” as his tenth and final film, he scuttled the project only to resurface with a script for a Cliff Booth spinoff movie at Netflix set in the 1970s that David Fincher (a longtime pal and collaborator of Pitt) would end up directing.
Abdul-Mateen II has been on the rise for a while now with parts in projects like HBO‘s “Watchmen” series, Lana Wachowski‘s “The Matrix Resurrections,” the “Aquaman” movies from James Wan, Michael Bay‘s crime thriller “Ambulance,” Aaron Sorkin‘s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” a series remake of “Man On Fire,” and the aforementioned Marvel series overseen by Destin Daniel Cretton (“Spider-Man: Brand New Day”).
Pitt and Fincher had been trying for ages to find another big movie to do together after things like “World War Z 2” and Disney‘s “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” never came together. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” from 2008 was the last time the pair made a feature film together until this new project that The Playlist first revealed.
We suspect even more high-profile actors are expected to join the project as we explore the further adventures of Cliff Booth.
