Brad Pitt is back as Cliff Booth — and Hollywood has become a much darker place.

Netflix has unveiled the official trailer for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, bringing back the character who earned Pitt an Academy Award for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

This time, however, Tarantino is handing the director’s chair to David Fincher, creating one of the most intriguing filmmaker collaborations of the year.

The film will arrive in IMAX cinemas on November 25, 2026, before making its streaming debut on Netflix on December 23.

Cliff Booth returns to a very different Hollywood

Set in 1977, eight years after the events of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the sequel finds Cliff Booth navigating an industry that has changed dramatically.

The former stuntman is no longer working as Rick Dalton’s double. Instead, he has become a studio fixer, taking care of the complicated and sometimes dangerous problems that powerful Hollywood figures would rather keep out of sight.

The new trailer offers a glimpse of Booth’s unpredictable world, filled with car chases, violent encounters, murder and mud-wrestling.

It also brings back his unmistakably dry sense of humour.

When a character played by Elizabeth Debicki asks why he stopped working with Rick Dalton, Cliff jokingly explains that the actor had become too heavy for him to double.

It is a reminder that, despite his new profession, Booth remains the same effortlessly cool and occasionally dangerous character audiences first met in 2019.

Brad Pitt reunites with David Fincher

The film marks another major collaboration between Pitt and Fincher, whose previous projects together include Se7en, Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Their creative partnership has produced some of the most recognisable films of Pitt’s career, making their reunion particularly significant.

This time, Fincher is working from a screenplay written by Tarantino, combining two very different filmmaking sensibilities.

Where Once Upon a Time in Hollywood offered Tarantino’s nostalgic, alternative-history portrait of late-1960s Los Angeles, the sequel moves into the grittier atmosphere of the late 1970s.

The trailer suggests a more dangerous journey through the film industry, with Cliff operating behind the scenes rather than in front of the cameras.

Leonardo DiCaprio will not return

Although Pitt is reprising his Oscar-winning role, Leonardo DiCaprio will not return as Rick Dalton.

The character remains part of Cliff’s history, but the new film moves forward with a different story and supporting cast.

Timothy Olyphant will reprise his role as actor James Stacy, while several major names are joining the franchise for the first time.

The ensemble includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Carla Gugino, Holt McCallany and JB Tadena.

Their characters introduce a new collection of personalities into Booth’s world, although the trailer leaves much of the film’s central storyline under wraps.

Why Quentin Tarantino chose not to direct

Tarantino’s decision to write the sequel without directing it has become one of the project’s most discussed aspects.

The filmmaker previously explained that although he loved the screenplay, returning to a world he had already explored did not feel right for his final planned feature film.

Tarantino has long said he intends to retire from directing after his tenth movie, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywoodcounting as his ninth.

Rather than revisit familiar territory himself, he chose to let Fincher bring the new story to the screen.

Tarantino remains closely involved as a producer alongside Pitt, David Heyman, Ceán Chaffin and Stacey Sher.

Los Angeles becomes part of the story again

The production was filmed on location in Los Angeles, preserving the city’s central role in the story.

One particularly playful detail appears in the trailer’s opening sequence, which features the Beverly Cinema, a real cinema owned by Tarantino since 2007.

The location creates another connection between the filmmaker and the fictional Hollywood universe he originally brought to life.

Cinematography is handled by Erik Messerschmidt, whose previous work with Fincher includes Mank and The Killer.

A major theatrical release before Netflix

Although the film is a Netflix production, audiences will have the opportunity to experience it on the big screen first.

The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth premieres in IMAX theatres on November 25, ahead of its Netflix release on December 23.

The theatrical launch gives the film a cinema-focused introduction before it becomes available to streaming audiences worldwide.

For fans of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the sequel offers something unusual: the return of a beloved character, written by his original creator, but reimagined through the perspective of another major director.

And with Brad Pitt back behind the wheel as Cliff Booth, the next chapter promises a very different journey through Hollywood’s past.