Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio to star in Quentin Tarantino’s Charles Manson film

[Nergal]

 

SUPERSTARS Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio will both star in Quentin Tarantino’s next film about the murder of Sharon Tate.

Incredibly, it will mark the first time the megastars have worked together on screen.

And DiCaprio could be reunited with his Wolf of Wall Street co-star Aussie Oscar nominee Margot Robbie who is rumoured to be playing the doomed Tate.

The film, titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, reportedly centres around two men who lived next door to Tate in the late 1960s.

In a press release, director Tarantino described 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 (DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognise anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbour ... Sharon Tate.

“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,” continued Tarantino. “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.”

The story is not for the faint-hearted. In 1968, the pregnant Tate, who was married to director Roman Polanski, was brutally murdered, along with her friends Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski, by members of the “Manson family” in her Los Angeles home.

Deadline reported last year that Tarantino had been keen to cast Robbie as Sharon Tate, but the Aussie star told The Hollywood Reporter last month that “nothing’s official” in terms of the movie, “but [she] would kill to work with” Tarantino.

Tarantino worked with DiCaprio in 2012’s Django Unchained and Pitt in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is slated to hit cinemas on August 9, 2019, which marks the day after 50th anniversary of the grisly murders.

The subject matter is sure to raise controversy for Tarantino who recently found himself embroiled in the Harvey Weinstein story while also earning a rebuke from Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman over his bad behaviour on the film’s set (he recently apologised to the actress).

Last October, Tarantino said he was ashamed that he was aware of some of Weinstein’s behaviour but did nothing. “I knew enough to do more than I did,” the director told The New York Times.

Tarantino also came under fire when an old interview surfaced in which he said then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, who has accused Roman Polanski of rape, “wanted it”.