Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is returning to theaters with even more time and even more Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature film will be re-released this Friday, October 25th, with 10 minutes of additional footage spaced over four new scenes. Add that to the original two-hour, 41-minute runtime and the movie, which stars Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, clocks in at nearly three hours.
Tarantino’s tweaked telling of the Manson Family murders will be return to over 1,000 theaters in the US and Canada, according to The Hollywood Reporter. One place that you won’t find the film, however, is China. Tarantino’s escalating feud with Bruce Lee’s daughter resulted in the movie being banned in The Middle Kingdom. Tarantino refused to re-cut the movie to appease Chinese censors, and while this longer edit may be totally unrelated, the timing is certainly curious.
Of course, there are many reasons Tarantino would want his film returned to theaters. Apart from his personal artistic goals, the most obvious reason is money. Once Upon a Time has already earned $368 million worldwide, and the re-release will certainly pad that out.
(Read: Five Facts You Never Knew About Charles Manson)
Award show considerations may also play a factor. Ever since Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan at the 1999 Academy Awards, there’s a sense that the Academy’s attention span is too short to remember summer blockbusters. Once Upon A Time was originally released in July, but it now gets another theatrical run at the same time as the usual Oscar bait.
This might not be Tarantino’s last visit to the world of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. According to the director, he’s already written a Once Upon a Time spinoff TV series. The show would be a Western comprised of 30-minute black-and-white episodes “starring” Dalton, who was played by DiCaprio in the film.
