Earlier this year film fans had their curiosities peaked when Quentin Tarantino teamed with Netflix to expand his movie THE HATEFUL EIGHT into a four-part miniseries, adding in some material that had been cut from the theatrical version. When his latest, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, came out this summer questions of if he would do it again for his latest epically-long flick started circulating. According to star Brad Pitt, the director has indeed talked about pulling off the same move for HOLLYWOOD. "Yeah he’s talked about it,” Pitt said. “It’s a pretty arousing idea.”
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The actor was speaking with Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times for a profile, and the writer released a few quotes that didn’t make the final piece. In one of them, the topic came up of EIGHT being turned into a miniseries, as well as the benefits of streaming in the modern era, which Pitt thinks allows for more exploration of the material.
“I look at series where you can spend much more time on characters and story and explore angles you don’t always get to do in film. So much of these films end up on the cutting room floor because they just don’t fit in the box. That’s why I think it’s interesting that Tarantino took Hateful Eight and ostensibly repurposed it as a three-part series. It’s almost the best of both worlds: You have the cinema experience that exists, but you can actually put more content in the series format.”
While Tarantino’s movies are often on the heftier side of the runtime spectrum, they’re often much, much longer in the initial script stages and assembly cuts, with the first cut of HOLLYWOOD reportedly running at about four hours and 20 minutes (via IndieWire). Some cut scenes included actors like Tim Roth as Jay Sebring’s butler, James Marsden as Burt Reynolds and more scenes with Damon Herriman's Charles Manson.
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Tarantino initially talked with /Film about EIGHT's release on Netflix, saying it's "exciting" to think about the idea of having your movie get the traditional theatrical release and then expanding it out into a "fuller version." There are some movies Tarantino said he wouldn't do this process for — such as KILL BILL and DJANGO UNCHAINED — saying that with the former he already got everything in between the two movies. When it comes to DJANGO he said he's already assembled a director's cut running at about three hours and 20 minutes, and that he intends to release that in theaters.
While Pitt's words aren't confirmation Tarantino will actually make and release an extended-miniseries version of HOLLYWOOD, the director seems exciting by the notion of doing something like he did with EIGHT again. In the case of his latest movie, it seems there's much more material that made the cutting room floor that would expand on the world and characters he explored. At its theatrical runtime, EIGHT already runs at a bit too long, but with HOLLYWOOD I feel like there's so much more to see than we did, so a several-episode miniseries could be a fascinating way to revisit his take on late-60s Hollywood.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is in theaters now.