Quentin Tarantino‘s new film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is set to premiere this May at the Cannes Film Festival where Tarantino won the Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction 25 years ago. The first trailer for is finally here. The highly anticipated film stars Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.
The film will be Tarantino’s first movie not made with Harvey Weinstein, after Tarantino cut ties with The Weinstein Company following sexual abuse allegations against Weinstein.
Tarantino, wrote the screenplay, directed and produced. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is inspired by his own upbringing in during Los Angeles’ hippie counterculture. Set in 1969, that historical year that saw the rise of Charles Manson‘s cult and their ultimate murder of five people over the course of two days. DiCaprio plays a faded television star and Pitt as his stunt double.
The star-studded project has taken a long road to its release. Tarantino:
I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old. I’m very excited to tell this story of an L.A. and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore.
Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate, the young star killed in the Manson Family murders which dominated the news in August 1969. Also in the cast: Al Pacino, Tim Roth, Lena Dunham, Kurt Russell and Michael Madsen; Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen; Rumer Willis as Joanna Pettet; Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, Hollywood hairstylist and friend of Tate who was murdered in Tate’s home; plus Dakota Fanning as Manson family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Bruce Dern (in a role slated for Burt Reynolds, who had the audacity to die before filming began) plays the old real-life rancher who owned the infamous ranch where Manson and his followers lived.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is the final film of the late Luke Perry who left this world on March 4, taken by complications from a stroke at 52-years-old. He portrays real-life stunt man Wayne Maunder.
The movie is set to open in July just weeks before the 50th anniversary of the Manson Family murders, a mass killing by members of the Manson Family, which claimed the lives of five people. Four members of the Manson Family invaded the rented home of Tate and director Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. They murdered Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant, along with four friends. Polanski was working on a film in Europe that night. The Manson Family was a desert commune/cult led by Charles Manson. The group consisted of approximately 100 of his followers, mostly young women from middle-class backgrounds who were radicalized by Manson’s teachings.
Polanski and Tate, 1968, via YouTube
Tate has been played by Katie Cassidy in the horror film Wolves At The Door (2016), loosely based on the Manson Family murders. In 2017, Rachel Roberts portrayed Tate in American Horror Story: Cult. Kate Bosworth is set to play Tate in the upcoming biopic Tate, also to be released this summer. Plus, there is The Haunting Of Sharon Tate, with Hilary Duff playing the titular character, scheduled for release on April 5. That makes it three Tate films in 2019.
