Is Netflix trying to bury the Fincher-Tarantino movie nobody's talking about?

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth hits IMAX screens on November 25 for an exclusive two-week run, then lands on Netflix on December 23. It's the standalone sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set in 1977: Pitt's stuntman now works as a studio fixer in a Los Angeles that, per Netflix's own logline, "no longer needs a hippie-slaying stuntman the way it did."

On paper this is the event release of the year. Tarantino wrote the script and handed it to Fincher rather than direct it himself:

"I love this script, but I'm still walking down the same ground I've already walked."

— Quentin Tarantino, on passing the film to Fincher

The budget is about $200 million — the largest either man has ever worked with — with $40 million going to Pitt and $20 million each to Fincher and Tarantino, plus Elizabeth Debicki, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Timothy Olyphant in the cast.

The campaign that isn't there

In 2019, Sony sold Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as "the 9th film from Quentin Tarantino" on every poster, and it grossed $377 million theatrically. The sequel's marketing is quiet enough that fans are doing the yelling for it:

"The marketing has been an abject disaster just based on the fact that every trailer has not highlighted the fact that this movie is written by QUENTIN TARANTINO and directed by DAVID FINCHER. They should be screaming that shit from the heavens."

— a commenter on r/movies

Another commenter named the suspect directly:

"Netflix happened. This is all Netflix. The IMAX only showings, the pull from Regal and Cinemark, the lack of meaningful publicity."

— a commenter on r/movies

The release math backs the suspicion

The theatrical run is IMAX-only — around 350 US locations, maybe fewer, with no standard-format showings allowed. Per World of Reel's reporting, the run exists at all only because Narnia: The Magician's Nephew vacated its IMAX slot, and Fincher reportedly wasn't particularly interested in theatrical distribution in the first place.

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None of that is an accident of scheduling; it's the business model. Netflix doesn't earn its money at the box office, so a loud theatrical hit mostly advertises an experience Netflix doesn't sell. A quiet two-week IMAX window, followed by a big December 23 push on the platform, turns the same film into a subscriber event instead — which is exactly the shape of this release.

Netflix put $200 million into Fincher, Tarantino and Pitt, and 350 screens into showing the result.

For viewers the math is less fun. The only Fincher-Tarantino collaboration in existence will be watchable on a big screen for 14 days, in one format, in a few hundred buildings — and then it becomes another thumbnail. If you want it the way both directors' fans have waited decades for, the window is November 25 to December 9.

Previously we wrote: The director whose Heat shootout Marines train on just shot himself in the leg at a range