Once Upon A Time In Hollywood ($375 Million Worldwide Box Office)

Quentin Tarantino is quietly starting to put together his latest project, and is talking to A-list actors for what is promising to be a unique take on the Manson Family murders.

The project, whose title is unknown, was written by Tarantino, who would also direct. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who have produced and executive produced the previous Tarantino films, are involved, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

WME is said to be in the early stages of shopping the project to studios to co-finance and co-distribute the venture. The move apes the way Tarantino and the Weinsteins made the filmmaker’s 2009 movie Inglourious Basterds, which had Universal Studios as a financial and distributing partner.

Sources say that Tarantino is putting the finishing touches on the script and that Brad Pitt, who worked with the filmmaker on Basterds, and Jennifer Lawrence have been approached. Studios could receive the package after Labor Day, according to one source. The plan is to shoot in 2018, possibly in the summer.

Script details are fuzzy but one of the stories centers on Sharon Tate, the actress and wife of director Roman Polanski who was murdered by Manson and his followers in 1969.

Manson had ordered a group of his followers to attack the inhabitants of a house in the Benedict Canyon part of Los Angeles, believing it was owned by a record producer who earlier had rejected him.

Over the course of several hours on the night of Aug. 8, the four followers, using guns and knives, brutally killed Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four other occupants.

In 1971, Manson and certain members of his crew were sentenced to life imprisonment for these and several other murders committed that summer.

If the Manson-Tate project does become Tarantino’s next film, it becomes unique in that it will be his first movie to be based on true events. Tarantino has molded his career into taking his favorite genres such as crime, Westerns and blaxploitation and elevating them to A-list status while also paying homage to them.

He also has proven to be able to create strong and memorable female roles, from the title character in Jackie Brown to the Bride in Kill Bill to the female characters on display in Death Proof.

Tate could be the latest to join that list.

Any actor involvement is on the early side, and one insider said that Lawrence is not considering the Tate role.

WyldeMan wrote:Tarantino takes on the Manson Family?!?! That is not a subject I ever expected him to touch.

If Pitt can return to his Kalifornia/Seven/Fight Club roots he might actually make a film I'd be excited to see again. Though I'm fairly certain there isn't much of a chance that QT wants Pitt for the Manson role, he's gotta be a Detective.

Honestly, I kind of immediately went to Walton Goggins when I saw the names, Tarantino and Manson. I think he'd own the role, even if he doesn't look like Charlie.

QT also wanted Jennifer Lawrence for Daisy Domergue in Hateful Eight, I believe he even wrote that role for her so I can't imagine he wouldn't make her Susan Atkins and give JLaw her first villainous role and if she plays Sexy Sadie that won't be a problem, BITCH WAS CRAZY!

And I'd go more Sienna Miller for Sharon Tate than JLaw.

Rusty Cunt wrote:This will be interesting. Goggins would be a great Manson, but I really think John Hawkes has the right look, and talent - but may be a bit too old.

Pitt I don't care for.

I just read that Tarantino has also talked with Margot Robbie for Tate. Much better than JLaw.

Tyger wrote:Yeah, not sure how I feel about this...

EXCLUSIVE: After making every movie in his directing career for Miramax and The Weinstein Company, Quentin Tarantino has made the hard decision to look for a new home for his upcoming film. The pic is being referred to as #9 because it is the ninth picture in his directing oeuvre, and it is being read this week by all of the major studios except Disney.

Tarantino planned to make this film — a drama set in late ’60s-early ’70s Los Angeles — with TWC, but those plans imploded with the scandalous removal of Harvey Weinstein after the revelation of a litany of nightmarish stories about forced sexual encounters with dozens of actresses and women who worked for the company. So The House That Quentin Built — as Weinstein often called his company because of the out-sized success of Tarantino-directed pictures that included Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained — is in the process of being sold off, and despite Tarantino’s loyalty to the 170 or so staff there that helped make his movies successful, he has officially left the building.

The aspirants for Tarantino’s next film are limited to the major studios, because Tarantino and his WME reps wanted to make one deal with a studio that has the ability to release the picture globally. There has been a lot of press that the script focuses on Charles Manson and the murder spree he orchestrated, but I’m told that is akin to calling Inglourious Basterds a movie about Adolf Hitler, when the Nazi leader was only in a scene or two. Deadline reported months ago that Margot Robbie had been asked to play Manson murder victim Sharon Tate, and Tarantino has roles for — and has had conversations with — the likes of Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson, who’ve all starred in his movies before. But no casting commitments have been made so far.

The first order of business is to secure the studio that will finance, market and distribute a movie that will begin production in mid-2018 for a 2019 release. All of the majors are in except for Disney, which doesn’t make the R-rated milieu that Tarantino has always worked in. I’m told that the script has strong commercial appeal, and if there is a film of Tarantino’s it can be best compared to, it would be Pulp Fiction, which also was set in Los Angeles about a decade after this one. The film will carry a budget in the range of Django Unchained, and it is expected that the hard conversations will begin early next week, with a deal culminating within the next two weeks.

“It’s not Charles Manson, it’s 1969,” cautioned Quentin Tarantino at an award-season post-screening brunch at Estrella on Sunset for Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” (Focus Features). The writer-director is looking for a new home for his ninth movie, now that he has withdrawn from scandal-plagued patron Harvey Weinstein, who has backed his features since picking up 1992’s “Reservoir Dogs.”

Tarantino just completed a round of pitch meetings last week set by WME from five studios with worldwide distribution (not including family-friendly Disney) seeking to back his untitled Manson Family Project, which he finished writing about five months ago, he said. (The cast is rumored to include Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Tarantino vets Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, and Leonardo DiCaprio.) He wasn’t ready to take the director’s helm until January in order to give himself some time for tinkering — and romance. He’s wearing a gold engagement ring in advance of his marriage to Israeli singer Daniella Pick.

So it’s full steam ahead once he chooses his next distribution partner. “It’s a level playing field,” he said cautiously. On what basis will he make that decision? “I don’t know.”

Tarantino was throwing some support to one-time girlfriend Coppola, who won best Director at Cannes this year for elegantly mounted Civil War melodrama “The Beguiled,” starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell and Kirsten Dunst. Coppola, who attended the party with producer Fred Roos, recently landed on New York Magazine’s best screenwriters list, and has a strong shot at an Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination. She’s gathering string now before starting to focus on her next script, she said.

Tarantino regaled Academy members like Diana Darrin with stories of his burgeoning 16 and 35 mm print collection for The New Beverly Cinema, which also includes Netflix films like “Okja,” and soon, Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories,” which Tarantino will be also be giving a second theatrical run December 1-7. “They don’t mind striking 35 mm prints,” he said. “And I get to keep them!”

Three Hollywood studios are engaging in a heated courtship of Quentin Tarantino as they work to out-charm each other for the rights to the “Pulp Fiction” director’s upcoming movie set against the backdrop of the Charles Manson murders.

Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros. have emerged as the three finalists for the project, Variety has learned. It’s possible, of course, that a dark horse candidate could still emerge. Each of the three studios heard Tarantino’s pitch, with Warners engaging in some splashy wooing in hopes of landing the film. When Tarantino arrived at the studio’s Burbank lot, he found the circular entrance in front of the administration building adorned with cars from the late 1960s. The Warner Bros. logo circa 1969 was on the marquee outside the studio, and the executive conference room was outfitted with vintage furniture from the era and mock posters for the movie. Much of Tarantino’s film unfolds in August of 1969, a time when Manson’s commune of followers murdered actress Sharon Tate and four of her friends.

Not to be outdone, Sony cooked up a multimedia presentation discussing how it would handle the release of the film, as well highlighting what it saw as its competitive advantages. Studio chief Tom Rothman used his time in front of Tarantino to talk up Sony’s marketing team and to take the director through the efforts that the company has made in recent years to bolster its international distribution. He emphasized that Sony could help the film succeed at the domestic box office, as well as internationally. Rothman was flanked by the studio’s senior staff, including Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch.

Initially, any execs interested in winning the project for their studio had to make the trek to WME’s offices to read the script. Every major studio, with the exception of Disney, made the pilgrimage to the agency headquarters. To get a second meeting with the director, the studios had to agree to a number of terms: Tarantino wants a production budget of roughly $100 million. He is also expecting first-dollar gross, meaning he will get a cut of the pre-tax revenue taken in by the studio, as well as final cut on the film.

Spokespeople from all three studios declined to comment, as did a spokesperson from WME.

The financial terms scared away many suitors, leaving Warner Bros., Sony and Paramount as the final bidders. At stake is the chance to be in business with a proven hitmaker and an Oscar winner. Tarantino is one of the rare auteurs whose films are true “events.” He’s mixed critical acclaim with commercial success, scoring with the likes of “Django Unchained,” “Kill Bill,” and “Inglourious Basterds.” His most recent effort, “The Hateful Eight,” was something of a box office disappointment, earning $155.8 million on a budget of $55 million. It’s rare to see studios engage in such ardent ego stroking. Insiders say the only recent bit of flirtation that is on this level is the theatrics that companies engaged in as they tried to nab the distribution rights to the James Bond franchise. In that case, it is believed that newcomer Annapurna emerged victorious.

Tarantino’s still-untitled film was originally set up at the Weinstein Co., but the rights are up for grabs because the indie studio is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The director has released nearly all of his films with Harvey Weinstein, but the mogul’s career has gone up in flames after dozens of women have accused him of sexual abuse and harassment.

ForeverBlu wrote:I'll play Devil's advocate on this one.

Tommy Stuntman surprised many, when he was cast in Collateral.

Also Tropic Thunder and Interview With the Vampire.

Like you pretty much started Wylde, everyone can't do QT.

But I think Cruise would put forth the effort to make it work.

As for Walton, if he's not lead Quentin probably still  will cast in a role.

ForeverBlu wrote:Brad and Leo worked with QT before, probably gives them an edge.

As for Robbie, already posted my thoughts about her as Sharon Tate.

The  Tonya Harding biopic looks hilariously bad.

I'm tired of her already.

Tyger wrote:Please no Cruise, let Tatum be the worst casting of a Tarantino movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America after masterminding the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969, died Sunday night after nearly a half-century in prison. He was 83.

Manson died of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence, his name synonymous to this day with unspeakable violence and depravity.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County, reacted to the death by quoting the late Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put Manson behind bars. Bugliosi said: "Manson was an evil, sophisticated con man with twisted and warped moral values."

"Today, Manson's victims are the ones who should be remembered and mourned on the occasion of his death," Hanisee said.

A petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, the charismatic, guru-like Manson surrounded himself in the 1960s with runaways and other lost souls and then sent his disciples to butcher some of L.A.'s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war — an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song "Helter Skelter."

The slayings horrified the world and, together with the deadly violence that erupted later in 1969 during a Rolling Stones concert at California's Altamont Speedway, exposed the dangerous, drugged-out underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the death of the era of peace and love.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Manson maintained during his tumultuous trial in 1970 that he was innocent and that society itself was guilty.

"These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them; I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up," he said in a courtroom soliloquy.

Linda Deutsch, the longtime courts reporter for The Associated Press who covered the Manson case, said he "left a legacy of evil and hate and murder."

"He was able to take young people who were impressionable and convince them he had the answer to everything and he turned them into killers," she said. "It was beyond anything we had ever seen before in this country."

California Corrections Department spokeswoman Vicky Waters said it has yet to be determined what happens to Manson's body. It was also unclear if Manson requested funeral services of any sort.

Prison officials previously said Manson had no known next of kin, and state law says that if no relative or legal representative surfaces within 10 days, then it's up to the department to determine whether the body is cremated or buried.

The Manson Family, as his followers were called, slaughtered five of its victims on Aug. 9, 1969, at Tate's home: the actress, who was 8½ months pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate's caretaker. Tate's husband, "Rosemary's Baby" director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.

The killers scrawled such phrases as "Pigs" and a misspelled "Healter Skelter" in blood at the crime scenes.

Manson was arrested three months later. In the annals of American crime, he became the personification of evil, a short, shaggy-haired, bearded figure with a demonic stare and an "X'' — later turned into a swastika — carved into his forehead.

"Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969," author Joan Didion wrote in her 1979 book "The White Album."

After a trial that lasted nearly a year, Manson and three followers — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.

Atkins died behind bars in 2009. Krenwinkel, Van Houten and Watson remain in prison.

Another Manson devotee, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, but her gun jammed. She served 34 years in prison.

Manson was born in Cincinnati on Nov. 12, 1934, to a teenager, possibly a prostitute, and was in reform school by the time he was 8. After serving a 10-year sentence for check forgery in the 1960s, Manson was said to have pleaded with authorities not to release him because he considered prison home.

"My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system," he would later say in a monologue on the witness stand. "I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you."

He was set free in San Francisco during the heyday of the hippie movement in the city's Haight-Ashbury section, and though he was in his mid-30s by then, he began collecting followers — mostly women — who likened him to Jesus Christ. Most were teenagers; many came from good homes but were at odds with their parents.

The "family" eventually established a commune-like base at the Spahn Ranch, a ramshackle former movie location outside Los Angeles, where Manson manipulated his followers with drugs, oversaw orgies and subjected them to bizarre lectures.

He had musical ambitions and befriended rock stars, including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. He also met Terry Melcher, a music producer who had lived in the same house that Polanski and Tate later rented.

By the summer of 1969, Manson had failed to sell his songs, and the rejection was later seen as a trigger for the violence. He complained that Wilson took a Manson song called "Cease to Exist," revised it into "Never Learn Not to Love" and recorded it with the Beach Boys without giving Manson credit.

Manson was obsessed with Beatles music, particularly "Piggies" and "Helter Skelter," a hard-rocking song that he interpreted as forecasting the end of the world. He told his followers that "Helter Skelter is coming down" and predicted a race war would destroy the planet.

"Everybody attached themselves to us, whether it was our fault or not," the Beatles' George Harrison, who wrote "Piggies," later said of the murders. "It was upsetting to be associated with something so sleazy as Charles Manson."

According to testimony, Manson sent his devotees out on the night of Tate's murder with instructions to "do something witchy." The state's star witness, Linda Kasabian, who was granted immunity, testified that Manson tied up the LaBiancas, then ordered his followers to kill. But Manson insisted: "I have killed no one, and I have ordered no one to be killed."

His trial was nearly scuttled when President Richard Nixon said Manson was "guilty, directly or indirectly." Manson grabbed a newspaper and held up the front-page headline for jurors to read: "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares." Attorneys demanded a mistrial but were turned down.

From then on, jurors, sequestered at a hotel for 10 months, traveled to and from the courtroom in buses with blacked-out windows so they could not read the headlines on newsstands.

Manson was also later convicted of the slayings of a musician and a stuntman.

Over the decades, Manson and his followers appeared sporadically at parole hearings, where their bids for freedom were repeatedly rejected. The women suggested they had been rehabilitated, but Manson himself stopped attending, saying prison had become his home.

The killings inspired movies and TV shows, and Bugliosi, the prosecutor, wrote a best-selling book about the murders, "Helter Skelter." The macabre rock star Marilyn Manson borrowed part of his stage name from the killer.

"The Manson case, to this day, remains one of the most chilling in crime history," veteran crime reporter Theo Wilson wrote in her 1998 memoir, "Headline Justice: Inside the Courtroom — The Country's Most Controversial Trials." ''Even people who were not yet born when the murders took place know the name Charles Manson, and shudder."

AP writer Michelle A. Monroe contributed to this report. This story contains biographical information compiled by former AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch. Deutsch covered the Tate-La Bianca killings and the Manson trial for The Associated Press and has written about the Manson family for four decades.

Sony has dated Quentin Tarantino’s untitled Charles Manson-themed ninth directorial effort — which Deadline consistently has been breaking the exclusive news about — for August 9, 2019. That date marks the 50th anniversary of Sharon Tate’s murder at the hands of the Manson “family.”

ForeverBlu wrote:He'll get some push back from Tate's family.

Plus I think Quentin's on borrowed time and is who Uma will expose.

Rusty wrote:I can't imagine it's Tarantino. The dude's far to involved geeking out on obscure films and women's feet to be considered a predator.

Her wrath will be directed at Harvey. Up until, and including Kill Bill, she had done about half a dozen Miramax films in the 90's, and only one other was Tarantino (Pulp Fiction).

EXCLUSIVE: Leonardo DiCaprio has said yes to starring in Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, which will reteam the actor and director from 2012’s Django Unchained. The new film, Tarantino’s ninth as director, was scooped up by Sony and already has an August 9, 2019 release date. The deal is expected to close soon, and this will become DiCaprio’s first film since he won the Oscar for The Revenant.

DiCaprio’s will play an aging actor in the story that is being kept under wraps but is a Pulp Fiction-esque movie set in the 1969 Los Angeles during the summer of the Manson murders.

Tarantino has already asked Margot Robbie to play the role of Sharon Tate, and as Deadline has reported Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt have been circling the project with DiCaprio for what is known to be two meaty male roles.

The release date coincides with the 50th anniversary of Tate’s murder at the hands of the Manson family.

The film is being produced by Harry Potter’s David Heyman, Tarantino and Shannon McIntosh, with Georgia Kacandes exec producer and line producer. Production begins this year, and is set with an $18 million California production tax credit.

Quentin Tarantino has set Brad Pitt to star with Leonardo DiCaprio in his upcoming film, and the filmmaker has chosen a title. Tarantino’s ninth film is Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Pic is set for August 9, 2019 release worldwide. Per Sony, Tarantino describes the film as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate.”

It wasn’t clear if Tarantino was providing an homage to Sergio Leone and his films Once Upon A Time In America and Once Upon A Time In The West, but it sounds like it.

Tarantino’s pal Robert Rodriguez has used the term for his film Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Sony Pictures acquired the film after Tarantino was forced to pull it away from The Weinstein Company because of the company’s woes.

As Deadline broke last year, Tarantino has asked Oscar-nominated I, Tonya star Margot Robbie to play Tate, who was murdered by Charles Manson’s crazy cult members.

Tarantino had been talking to both DiCaprio and Pitt, as well as Tom Cruise for those two key roles. Just as he reteamed with DiCaprio after Django Unchained, Tarantino reunites with Pitt after the WWII pic Inglourious Basterds, which got eight Oscar noms. Pitt just finished the James Gray-directed Ad Astra.

Said Tarantino: “I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old. I’m very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff.”

Tyger wrote:I hope Tim Roth gets to be a Tim Roth character

Rusty wrote:Olyphantastic gets the Tarantino treatment. Nice.

WyldeMan wrote:I very much want Walton Goggins to sign on now.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:I very much want Walton Goggins to sign on now.

YES! That would complete this cast.