From star Leonardo DiCaprio‘s own Twitter account, we have our first look at promotional material for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s a simple poster featuring DiCaprio, who stars as fading cowboy star Rick Dalton, and Brad Pitt, who plays Dalton’s stunt double Cliff Booth.
This is only the beginning of what will surely be a steady march of previews for Tarantino’s look at Hollywood in the time of the Manson murders, with a trailer slated to premiere later this week.
DiCaprio simply captioned the poster with “Hollywood. 1969,” and the hashtag #OnceUponATimeInHollywood.
Tarantino’s movies are events anyway, but this one looks like a true blockbuster, given the amazing cast in addition to DiCaprio and Pitt: Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, Al Pacino, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, James Marsden, Emile Hirsch, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, and Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen.
Hollywood also features Luke Perry—who died suddenly at 52 on March 4, 2019—in his final role, a fictional character named Scott Lancer.
Here’s the synopsis as reported by Vanity Fair:
Set in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, Tarantino’s upcoming movie, according to a source who read the script, focuses on a male TV actor who’s had one hit series and his looking for a way to get into the film business. His sidekick—who’s also his stunt double—is looking for the same thing.
The horrific murder of Sharon Tate and four of her friends by Charles Manson’s cult of followers serves as a backdrop to the main story.
So there’s no retconning of actual history a la Inglourious Basterds, where Hitler suffers a satisfyingly brutal but fictional fate. As far as we know Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and Voytek Frykowski don’t unleash kung fu moves on the Manson followers who killed them in real life.
Tarantino has in fact said the movie will be “probably the closest to Pulp Fiction that I have done.” We still don’t know what that means.
We’ll have more answers when the trailer is released in a few days and all the answers when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premieres on July 26th.
