The latest actor to join the star cast of David Fincher's The Adventures of Cliff Booth, based on the Brad Pitt's character from Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
Actors Elizabeth Debicki and Scott Caan were recently announced to have onboarded the film.
The film marks the fourth collaboration between Fincher and Pitt after Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
The development of the sequel started after Tarantino shelved plans for his tenth and purportedly final film The Movie Critic. The film, set in the 1970s, had a screenplay ready and Pitt was attached to play the lead character, reportedly a film critic at a porn magazine. According to speculation, Pitt's character might have been a variation of the stuntman who, in Tarantino's novel adaptation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a film buff. The extent to which elements of Tarantino's shelved project have been incorporated into the untitled sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is undisclosed.
Mateen has his acting credits in The Trial of Chicago 7, The Matrix Resurrections and the Aquaman films. Up next, Mateen will play the titular role in Wonder Man from Marvel Studios, the Netflix series Man on Fire, and the crime thriller By Any Means, opposite Mark Wahlberg.