We may see more of the drunken-fueled adventures of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) in a four-hour cut of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. The Quentin Tarantino film is still enjoying its love fest this awards season, and during a For Your Consideration screening, the filmmaker revealed he may one day release a third version of his moving ode to moviemaking and bygone era.
The Four-Hour Cut
Before the Hollywood fantasy came out there was already talk of what was left on the cutting room floor, including James Marsden playing Burt Reynolds and a performance from Q.T. regular, Tim Roth. The finished film was 160 minutes long — a comfortable length Tarantino worked towards with the help of Sony head honcho Tom Rothman, he told Collider:
“It’s all good. It’s all great. I don’t know if an audience would sit for it, but I love it. So we showed it to Tom Rothman and it was like, ‘OK, here this all is. We know that this is a movie, but maybe you can help us out because we like everything.’”
As for the four-hour cut, we could see it in a year somehow, someway:
“Hey look, it’s all good so once this whole thing is said and done, maybe in a year’s time, we probably will.”
The Previous Extended Cut
The four-hour edition would mark the third released cut of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. Shortly after the movie’s box-office success, Sony and Tarantino released an extended cut in theaters with 10 more minutes of footage. Those 10 minutes included Marsden as Reynolds, lighting up a Red Apple cigarette on a set. The other footage included an ad for the cigs and a beer company. Nothing major, but it was more feel-good fun from Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
As for the four-hour version, that sounds like a dream. Who wouldn’t want to hangout with Cliff, Rick, and the gang for another hour and some change? It was a hangout movie at the end of the day, in which most of the joy was derived from simply observing the characters either chatting, driving, acting, or drinking.
The Django Unchained: Director’s Cut
Tarantino has recut several of his films. The extended cut of Death Proof is a piece of dynamite that flows and plays much better than its original cut. Famously, there was Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, an unreleased cut of the movie with both volumes combined. And lastly, Tarantino released an extended cut of The Hateful Eight on Netflix.
Next up? Django Unchained, Tarantino told SlashFilm last year:
“But for instance like take Django [Unchained], I’ve actually cut a director’s cut of Django. That’s about like three hours and 15 minutes, or three hours and 20 minutes, something like that. That’s one I wouldn’t do as a mini-series because it would just be better [as a movie]. I thought about that idea, but that would just work better as one movie. Just a longer one as far as I was concerned. So I’ve actually done that. We’re just kind of waiting some time after Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and we’ll release that eventually.”
Q.T.’s Always Promising Future
Tarantino only has one movie left in him before he retires from filmmaking. He wants to go out on top with a very complete filmography of ten high-quality films with no serious misfires to his name, which he believes filmmakers gain later in their careers. Nobody, however, is ever going to take the pencil and paper out of Tarantino’s hand as he writes his scripts longhand without a computer. Tarantino is already working on a TV series, a play, and potentially a book. In the future, he’ll likely tackle and dominate other mediums outside of film.
