Quentin Tarantino’s ninth movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is premiering at Cannes this week. So in honor of the film’s debut, Sony decided to drop the film’s first full trailer Tuesday morning—and the thing looks absolutely incredible.
The first half of the two-and-a-half-minute trailer plays like a goofy buddy comedy starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Western actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The two pal around on various sets, and Leo roasts some Nazis with a flamethrower in a movie, but once Dalton realizes that his next-door neighbor on Cielo Drive is up-and-coming starlet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), the film takes a darker turn.
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Booth winds up at Spahn Ranch, the defunct Western movie set where the Manson Family lived and plotted Helter Skelter while knitting vests out of human hair. For a film that Tarantino swears isn’t a Manson movie, there sure is a lot of Manson in the trailer. It looks like Booth will at least get friendly with the hippie cult leader, and the trailer ends with a sinister shot of three Manson Family members—presumably Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel, one armed with a knife—walking down Cielo Drive en route to Tate’s house.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premieres Tuesday night at Cannes, but don’t expect any tweets about the movie’s plot or whatever, since Tarantino has already begged the Cannes audience not to spoil the movie’s ending. We’ll have to wait until the film hits theaters on July 26 to find out if he decided to pull another Inglourious Basterds and actually have Dalton and Booth save Tate and kill Manson or whatever.
Until then, give the trailer a watch above.
