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Quentin Tarantino Signs Two-Book Deal, Including ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Novelisation

By November 28, 2020News

Last year, famed film director Quentin Tarantino released his ninth film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as a struggling Hollywood actor and Brad Pitt as his faithful stunt double. Tarantino quickly established himself as a serious talent in film-making with titles such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill, but now he’s turning his hand to writing following a two-book deal with HarperCollins.

 

The first book will be a novelisation of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and will reportedly be published in 2021. The novelisation intends to dive deeper into the story of the film and will give a “fresh, playful and shocking departure from the film.” The book will further exp[lore the lives of DiCaprio and Pitt’s characters, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, both forward and backwards in time.

As Variety reports, the novel is inspired by the movie adaptations that inspired Tarantino in the 70s. “In the ’70s, movie novelizations were the first adult books I grew up reading,” he said. “And to this day I have a tremendous amount of affection for the genre. So as a movie-novelization aficionado, I’m proud to announce ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ as my contribution to this often marginalized, yet beloved sub-genre in literature. I’m also thrilled to further explore my characters and their world in a literary endeavor that can (hopefully) sit alongside its cinematic counterpart.”

The second book from Tarantino will be non-fiction and will entitled Cinema Speculation. Taking a look at cinema in the 1970s, the book will feature opinions, reviews, and musings from its author. Noah Eaker, Vice President and Executive Editor of HarperCollins said:

“Quentin Tarantino’s literary talents have been in plain sight since his first scripts, but to see how skillfully he endows his characters with life on the page and how he constantly takes a reader by surprise, even one who knows the movie by heart, is to see a master storyteller trying on a new form and making it his own.”

It’s worth noting that, as we reported, Tarantino had recently stated he was working on a novel about a World War II veteran who falls in love with foreign cinema. While the book deal he has with HarperCollins doesn’t appear to include that book, we might still see it published one day, though it’s worth noting Tarantino seems to have many projects on the go, some of which never see the light of day. Still, fingers crossed.

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