Cliff Booth Sequel Footage Stuns AFI Fest Crowd

The Cliff Booth sequel just got its first public screening, and the room reportedly lost it. On Friday night, October twenty-third, Quentin Tarantino closed a question-and-answer session at AFI Fest in Los Angeles by showing the audience the opening seventeen minutes of the Cliff Booth sequel, officially titled The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, according to Deadline.

A Surprise Nobody Saw Coming

The evening at the TCL Chinese Theatre was billed as an IMAX screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood followed by a conversation with its director. Near the end, Tarantino was asked how the follow-up came together and whether he had anything else to add. His answer was to offer the crowd a choice: he could talk about the film, or he could simply play the first seventeen minutes. Then he stood up, and the audience began to realize what was coming.

Security guards were posted throughout the theatre, and people were told to put their phones away. That is why there is no leaked clip floating around your feed, only written accounts. The Hollywood Reporter described the footage as showing Booth working as a cinema projectionist while handling some more unsavory business on the side, and TheWrap called it an alternately talky and explosive stretch of film.

What Is Known About the Story

The Cliff Booth sequel jumps ahead to nineteen seventy-seven, eight years after the events of the first movie. Brad Pitt returns as the stuntman, who by then seems to be in a very different place in life. According to the official logline reported by Deadline, Los Angeles no longer needs a hippie-slaying stuntman the way it once did, but Hollywood keeps producing problems that only someone with Booth's occasionally extralegal skills can solve.

When he is not earning a living as a bartender or a projectionist, Booth works as a fixer for Hollywood's great and, sometimes, not so good. The supporting cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Peter Weller. Tarantino wrote the script, but David Fincher is directing it for Netflix.

Why Tarantino Went Back to Booth

Tarantino explained his reasons to the crowd, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He said he loved the character and loved the way Pitt played him, and he described Booth as a kind of paperback hero, the sort of figure who could star in a whole series of pulpy adventures. After the first film, he kept thinking up a different adventure that would drop Booth into a misadventure, simply to see what would happen.

He also admitted how deeply he has invested in this fictional version of late nineteen-sixties Hollywood, including writing a novel set in the same world. That research, he suggested, means the audience does not have to know every detail, but can trust that he does. It is a rare thing to hear a filmmaker talk about a sequel as a way of staying in a place he enjoys living in.

The Fincher Factor

The biggest question hanging over the project has always been what happens when Tarantino's words land in Fincher's hands. Fincher has said the first draft he read ran two hundred and thirty pages, which he told Empire was essentially two movies. Deadline notes that sixty pages came out, and that the final cut runs about two and a half hours.

TheWrap reports that the crowd burst into applause several times during the footage, and that the new material captured the hangout vibe of the original. Tarantino himself argued that the first film works because it is not really about plot, and that the joy comes from simply spending time with its characters. Whether Fincher's famously exacting style can hold onto that loose feeling is the real test, and TheWrap called it intriguing to watch the director handle this world.

How and When You Can Watch It

If you want the full experience, plan around the theatre. Netflix is giving the Cliff Booth sequel an exclusive IMAX run beginning November twenty-fifth, which makes it one of the rare Netflix films to get a proper big-screen release. The streaming debut follows on December twenty-third, just two days before Christmas, so there is a quick wait for anyone who prefers their couch.

Tarantino also used the evening to tease his next project outside cinema. His first stage play, The Popinjay Cavalier, starring Sacha Baron Cohen, begins previews at London's Phoenix Theatre on February twenty-third and opens on March eighteenth. For a director who has long hinted that he is winding down his filmmaking career, it is another sign that he is now thinking like a writer first.

The reaction at AFI Fest suggests the Cliff Booth sequel may be one of the buzziest winter releases, and the gap between seeing seventeen minutes and seeing the full picture is now only about a month. For more on the biggest releases, check out the movies coverage as the premiere date gets closer.