Writer/director Quentin Tarantino has added seven more cast members to his latest film, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, which is set in Los Angeles in 1969, "at the height of hippy Hollywood", and has some kind of connection to the Manson Family and the murders they committed. In fact, one of the newly announced cast members is playing a member of the Manson Family, while another will be playing one of their victims.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have the lead roles in the film,
Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor… Sharon Tate.
Previously confirmed to be co-starring in the film are Zoe Bell, Kurt Russell, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, and Timothy Olyphant – going from being "the freaky Tarantino film student" in SCREAM 2 to appearing in a Tarantino movie – with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Burt Reynolds as George Spahn, the man who owned the ranch the Manson Family lived on.
Joining them are Luke Perry as a character named Scotty Lancer; Clifton Collins Jr. as Ernesto the Mexican Vaquero (his Westworld character is pictured above); Keith Jefferson as Land Pirate Keith; 1970s TV Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as real life actor/director Sam Wanamaker; Olyphant's DREAMCATCHER co-star Damian Lewis as iconic actor Steve McQueen; Dakota Fanning as Squeaky Fromme, "the Manson disciple who later tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford"; and Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, a "Hollywood hairstylist who was one of four victims in the Tate murders on Cielo Drive."
That's one hell of a cast Tarantino is putting together, and he's not finished yet. Rumor is that one of the roles he's still looking to fill is the legendary Bruce Lee. I'll be very interested to see what McQueen and Lee have to do in the movie, whether they're just cameos or if their roles are more substantial.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is scheduled to be released on August 9, 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the Tate murders.