Quentin Tarantino to put off directing movies with another Cliff Booth novel

Quentin Tarantino, facing the longest break in his directing career, is diverting his attention to writing another novel featuring Cliff Booth. The British stage will be his new canvas, as he shuns directing movies. Variety reports that Tarantino will publish a sequel to his Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood novel, titled The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, a spin-off from the David Fincher film he declined to direct, The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth.

The sequel is set in 1977, eight years after the end of the movie, and will explore Booth’s more successful and deliberate exploits, diverging from the misfortunes depicted in the original film. Despite no plot details being available, a logline suggests the novel will follow Cliff Booth, a war hero, stuntman, bartender, cinema projectionist, and occasionally a “clandestine services” provider for his friends.

This marks the third novel in the Once Upon A Time series, following The Films Of Rick Dalton. Tarantino’s previous novel about Booth, which portrayed him as a psychopathic cinephile, caused many to believe that his nearly finished film, The Movie Critic, starring Brad Pitt, would follow the character as a film reviewer for a porno magazine.

However, Tarantino revealed that Booth was absent from The Movie Critic and had provided Fincher with a “gigantic novel written in screenplay form” of unused Booth misadventures. The new novel is set to release on December 8, just a few weeks before the film’s December 23 Netflix premiere. The movie also boasts a brief IMAX-only theatrical run from November 25 before disappearing into Netflix’s lineup.

Meanwhile, to avoid directing movies, Tarantino will direct a stage farce starring Sacha Baron Cohen, titled The Popinjay Cavalier.