Margot Robbie recently teased the existence of a “20-hour cut” of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is far longer than any movie should be (unless it’s two hours of plot and 18 hours of Brad Pitt saying the word “horsie”). Sony will never #ReleaseTheTarantinoCut, but unused footage from the 2019 film does appear in the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel.
The bonus scenes include Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Trudi Fraser (young standout Julia Butters) chatting on the phone; Sharon Stone (Margot Robbie) radiating pure joy; Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) rambling about pocket combs; and Charlie Manson speaking gibberish to freak out Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). That one appears as a deleted scene on the Blu-ray, but there’s more Dewey Crowe’s Manson in the trailer above.
The book will explore “the characters further and deeper, and learning secrets that you didn’t know, and were not in the movie,” according to writer and director Quentin Tarantino. “It’s not just me taking the screenplay and then breaking it down in a novelistic form. I retold the story as a novel… It was a complete rethinking of the entire story and not just a rethinking as far as throwing some scenes that were left out of the editing room.” It will also explore Cliff Booth’s potentially murderous backstory.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel comes out on June 29.