Brad Pitt Returns as Cliff Booth in New Netflix Film

Brad Pitt is bringing Cliff Booth back, eight years older and with a somewhat different way of making a living. “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” reunites Pitt with one of his most recognisable recent characters, this time in a film directed by David Fincher and written by Quentin Tarantino.

The first full trailer introduces a very different chapter for Booth. The former stuntman is no longer spending his days doubling for movie stars. In 1977, he works behind a bar, screens films, picks up whatever jobs come his way and quietly operates as a Hollywood fixer, the kind of person people call when a problem needs solving and conventional methods have already stopped being useful.

The character first appeared in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” as the stunt double and closest friend of Leonardo DiCaprio’s fictional actor Rick Dalton. By the end of that film, Booth had found himself in the middle of a violent encounter involving members of the Manson Family at Dalton’s home. Pitt won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role, giving Cliff a life that extended well beyond the film’s fictional Hollywood mythology.

Now that mythology has moved forward.

Netflix’s new film places Booth in a city where his old skills still have currency, even if the job title has changed. His knowledge of actors, crews, studios and the less respectable machinery surrounding the entertainment business makes him useful to people who prefer their problems handled quietly. Sometimes that means crossing legal lines.

The trouble begins with a phone call from talent agent Karen Crosby, played by Elizabeth Debicki. She needs Booth to help with a situation involving her client Charlie Peters, a television star portrayed by Scott Caan. Charlie has built a reputation for performing his own stunts, but the deeper Booth gets into his world, the less straightforward the assignment becomes.

The cast expands from there. Carla Gugino plays Charlie’s wife, Toni, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen II appears as Roderick “Hot Rod” Harrison, a former professional football player who has crossed over into movie stardom. Timothy Olyphant also returns as James Stacy, reprising the character he played in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”. Peter Weller, Corey Fogelmanis and Karren Karagulian round out the ensemble.

The official premise turns Booth’s new career into a proper Hollywood crime story, with murder, blackmail, theft and extortion sitting somewhere in the background of the business he knows so well. The trailer suggests that age has changed very little about the way he deals with trouble.

The more unusual element, however, sits behind the camera.

Tarantino wrote the screenplay, while Fincher directs, a division of labour that takes a character born from Tarantino’s alternate version of late-1960s Hollywood and places him inside Fincher’s darker, more controlled visual territory. It also brings Fincher and Pitt together again after “Se7en”, “Fight Club” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.

For Pitt, the role marks a return to a character that already carries its own history. For Tarantino, it extends the world of a film that was never particularly interested in staying faithful to the Hollywood that actually existed. And for Fincher, it means stepping into a story he didn’t create while giving its central figure another decade of trouble to get himself into.

“The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” will first arrive in IMAX theatres on November 25 for a two-week exclusive theatrical run. Netflix will release the film worldwide on December 23, marking the platform’s first movie to receive a worldwide IMAX theatrical release.