Here's why Quentin Tarantino is not directing The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Quentin Tarantino wrote The Adventures of Cliff Booth, is getting paid like its director, and still won't be the one yelling "action."
The Adventures of Cliff Booth brings back the stuntman Brad Pitt played in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the 2019 role that won him an Oscar. This time Cliff works as a Hollywood fixer. David Fincher directs from Tarantino's script, with Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Scott Caan and Timothy Olyphant, back as TV cowboy James Stacy. Netflix opens it in IMAX theaters on November 25, 2026, and starts streaming it on December 23.
The tenth-film problem
Tarantino has said for years that he'll retire after ten movies, and he has made nine. The tenth was supposed to be The Movie Critic, set in 1977 California and built around a sour, pessimistic film reviewer. Somewhere in development, Cliff Booth was written into it, with Pitt attached.
In April 2024, Tarantino dropped the whole thing. The script wasn't the problem. Prep was.
"I was so excited about the writing," he said later, but "I wasn't really that excited about dramatizing what I wrote."
Why not this one
Cliff survived the purge. Tarantino kept writing him on the side, and in April 2025 Netflix bought the finished script. What Tarantino didn't want was to shoot it. On The Church of Tarantino podcast in August 2025, he explained that a Cliff Booth movie felt like home turf.
"I'm still walking down the same ground I've already walked," Tarantino said.
He was clear that he likes what he wrote. "I love this script," he said. "It just kind of unenthused me." His final film, he said, has to be something else entirely: "This last movie, I've got to not know what I'm doing again."
A sequel starring his own character, set in his own version of old Hollywood, is the one thing he already knows how to do.
How Fincher got the job
Pitt was the one who asked whether someone else could direct, and Tarantino said yes, depending on who. Pitt brought in Fincher, who had directed him in Seven, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
"He didn't want to direct it at this point," Pitt told Deadline, "so our friend David Fincher stepped in."
Tarantino had no complaints about the replacement. "I think me and David Fincher are the two best directors," he said. Fincher wanting to adapt his work, he added, "shows a level of seriousness towards my work."
Cameras rolled in California in late July 2025 and stopped on January 15, 2026.
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The paychecks
Tarantino puts the budget "in the region of $200 million," the most expensive film either he or Fincher has ever been part of. The reported split:
- Brad Pitt — $40 million to star and produce
- David Fincher — $20 million to direct
- Quentin Tarantino — $20 million
So the writer who turned down the job is making exactly what the man who took it is making.
What Tarantino is doing instead
His next project isn't a movie at all. The Popinjay Cavalier is a stage play, a swashbuckling comedy set in 1830s Europe, and Sacha Baron Cohen will play the title role. Its official synopsis calls it "a rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise," which is about as far from old Hollywood as Tarantino has ever gone.
The play opens in London's West End in spring 2027. The tenth film, according to Screen Daily, is scheduled to shoot after that, during 2027.
Previously we wrote: I was told nobody wanted Brad Pitt anymore. His dog movie just passed $180 million