Tarantino felt he let Pitt down by not directing Cliff Booth sequel

Quentin Tarantino felt he was "really letting down" Brad Pitt by deciding not to direct The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth.

Following the success of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood in 2019, Tarantino wrote a sequel for Pitt's stuntman character Cliff Booth. However, after completing the script, the Pulp Fiction filmmaker decided he didn't want it to be his 10th and final directorial outing.

"(Pitt) was the one I felt I was really letting down when I didn't do it," Tarantino told David Fincher, who ultimately directed the film, in a joint interview with Empire. "I felt bad about that."

Fincher noted Pitt was "disappointed that he wasn't going to play Cliff Booth again", so the actor got permission from Tarantino to show his script to the Seven director.

Recalling his reaction when Pitt suggested showing Fincher, Tarantino said, "Oh, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was like, 'Really? You think he'd be interested? F**king yeah: show it to him!'"

While The Social Network filmmaker was "smitten" with the project, Tarantino feared talking Fincher out of it amid his excitement.

"The first couple of times we spoke, I was the male trying to talk this gorgeous woman into f**king me. I was trying to manoeuvre it so I wouldn't say anything that f**ks s**t up," he shared.

"I mean, one of the things that made this all work was my excitement over David doing my material. I've gotten a lot of respect as a screenwriter, but I still feel that people think that I'm a director who just writes s**t for himself. The fact that a director of David's calibre would spend a year-and-a-half of his life doing my material was, I thought, wonderful. It said a lot about what was on the page."

The sequel takes place eight years after the events of the first film, with Booth now a studio fixer in Hollywood. Pitt is joined by Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Scott Caan, and Timothy Olyphant.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens in select cinemas on 25 November before streaming on Netflix on 23 December.