Yahoo Movies Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio Tease ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’
Quentin Tarantino has yet to shoot a single frame of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but that didn’t stop the Oscar-winning writer and director from predicting great things from his forthcoming Tinseltown epic.
At Sony Pictures’ CinemaCon presentation on Monday night, Tarantino said Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the film’s two leading men, will be “the most exciting dynamic star duo since Paul Newman and Robert Redford.”
Pitt wasn’t on hand in Las Vegas, but DiCaprio flanked Tarantino on the Caesars Palace stage, telling the audience of theater owners that the film boasts “one of the most amazing screenplays [the writer-director] has ever written.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is shrouded in mystery, but Tarantino has said that it takes place in 1969. The Manson family murders are reportedly going to factor into a larger tapestry of a changing movie business — it’s a time when the studio system was collapsing and a rising generation of young turks was taking its place, bringing with them revolutionary on-screen depictions of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.
“It takes place at the height of the counterculture explosion,” said Tarantino. “It takes place at the time of the hippie revolution, and it takes place at the height of new Hollywood.”
He added that the film will be the most similar in style and plotting to his 1994 masterwork, “Pulp Fiction.”
Tarantino, who owns the New Beverly Cinema, a historic revival house in Los Angeles, won over the crowd of theater owners by noting that he was also an exhibitor.
“I love movies and I love movies in movie theaters,” said Tarantino. “They are my favorite place in the world.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” hits theaters on August 9, 2019. That marks the fiftieth anniversary of actress Sharon Tate’s murder at the hands of Charles Manson’s followers.
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