Quentin Tarantino Is Working On A New Project For One of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Best Characters
Quentin Tarantino can't leave this Leonardo DiCaprio character alone!
This article is more than 2 years old
Quentin Tarantino just can’t stop returning to the world of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, specifically, Leonard DiCaprio’s character Rick Dalton. DiCaprio, who worked with Tarantino on other immensely popular films like Django Unchained, played Rick Dalton, an aging Western actor struggling to stay relevant in the 1960s. While his character certainly gets an impressive story arc in the movie, which was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, the director continues to want to revisit him.
Not only does Leonardo DiCaprio’s character get fleshed out a bit more in the novelization of the movie, which Quentin Tarantino recently wrote, but it seems he even went as far as to pen a fictional biography of the character that goes all the way up to his life in 1998. Speaking on the Empire Film Podcast, Quentin Tarantino let it slip that he’s already been in talks with his publisher to get the fictional biography on store shelves given that he’s already got it written.
The director revealed some minor plot details about the book, being careful not to give anything too juicy away. According to Slashfilm, Quentin Tarantino explained that the premise of the book sees him actually meeting Rick Dalton in 1998 at a Hawaiian film festival, which inspires him to sit down and interview the star as well as pen the definitive biography about his life. He teased Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fans by noting that, after the events of the film, he envisioned a mysterious “major success” for Dalton that gets his career back on track and gives him the relevance he so sorely was hoping to achieve.
The book even includes a Q&A between Quentin Tarantino and Rick Dalton, all coming from the mind of the acclaimed writer/director (and now novel author). As mentioned, he revealed that his publisher, Harper Collins, is already on board to produce the book and get it on store shelves as soon as he is ready. However, despite having the entire book written, he is not yet ready.
The reason for that is because now that the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is all set, Quentin Tarantino still has another book he promised the publisher on the horizon. Deadline previously reported that his deal with the publisher was for two books, the second being Cinema Speculation. The outlet reports that he often teased a career in writing once he retires from directing, which he’s hinted he’ll do after making a tenth movie. Cinema Speculation is billed as a deep dive into the movies of the 1970s filled with reviews, personal essays, as well as “tantalizing ‘what if’s’” which may have contributed to putting Quentin Tarantino in the headspace to revisit the alternate reality of Hollywood he created in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Once that book is over and done with, fans can likely expect to revisit Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton by way of a third book penned by Quentin Tarantino for Harper Collins. However, that may not be the end of the acclaimed filmmaker and film fan’s body of work. Slashfilm notes that he has previously teased the idea of revisiting another one of his major silver-screen success stories, Reservoir Dogs, by way of either a novelization or written expansion. Only time will tell what Quentin Tarantino sees for himself once he decides to officially retire.
