Quentin Tarantino to turn ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ into a novel

In April, Quentin Tarantino announced on ‘Pure Cinema Podcast’ that he was thinking of adapting the screenplay of his acclaimed, star-studded film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood into a novel.

“I hadn’t thought about that until recently. But now I’m thinking a lot about it. I might be writing a novelization to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the director said.

According to Deadline, Tarantino has signed a two-book deal with Harper, the HarperCollins imprint. The second book would be a work of nonfiction, titled Cinema Speculation.

Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is set to be released in summer 2021. The novel will follow Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) “both forward and backward in time.”

“In the seventies, movie novelizations were the first adult books I grew up reading. 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’ 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,” Tarantino told Deadline.

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Deadline describes Tarantino’s second book as a “deep dive into the movies of the 1970’s, a rich mix of essays, reviews, personal writing, and tantalizing “what if’s,” from one of cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers, and its most devoted fan.”

HarperCollins Vice President and Executive Editor Noah Eaker 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.”