LOS ANGELES -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt -- two of Hollywood's biggest stars -- are teaming up for Quentin Tarantino's next project, a movie set in the 1969 Hollywood hippy era around the Charles Manson murders.
Movie studio Sony Pictures said on Wednesday that the film was called "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and will feature DiCaprio as the former star of a Western TV series, and Pitt as his longtime stunt double.
It's the first time the two actors have starred in a feature film together.
"Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don't recognize anymore. But Rick (DiCaprio) has a very famous next-door neighbor ... Sharon Tate," Sony Pictures said in a statement.
Tate, the pregnant actress wife of director Roman Polanski, was murdered in 1969 by followers of Manson, one of America's most notorious criminals. Manson died in November 2017 at the age of 83 while serving a life sentence.
The movie is to be released on August 9, 2019, exactly 50 years after Tate and four friends were stabbed or shot dead.
Tarantino said he had been working on the script for five years and had lived in the Los Angeles area for most of his life, "including in 1969, when I was seven years old."
"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 and Pitt," he said in a statement.
DiCaprio won an Oscar in 2016 for his role in "The Revenant" while Pitt was Oscar-nominated for performances in "Moneyball" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
Tarantino has two Oscars for the screenplays of "Django Unchained" and "Pulp Fiction," both of which he also directed.
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LOS ANGELES - Leonardo DiCaprio will star in a movie set around the Charles Manson murders, Hollywood entertainment publications reported on Friday, but he will not play the role of the American cult leader.
DiCaprio will instead take the part of an aging, out-of-work actor in the as-yet untitled movie being produced and directed by Oscar-winner Quentin Tarantino, Variety and Deadline.com said.
Plot details have not been released but Tarantino said in November that it was not a biographical movie but a story set during the summer of 1969, when a string of gruesome killings in Southern California were carried out by Manson's followers.
Manson, one of the 20th century's most notorious criminals, died in November at the age of 83. He had been serving a life sentence for ordering the murders of nine people including actress Sharon Tate.
The Sony Pictures movie is to be released on Aug. 9, 2019, exactly 50 years after Tate and four friends were stabbed or shot dead.
Deadline and Variety said that Australian actress Margot Robbie has been asked to play Sharon Tate. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Al Pacino are also rumored to be interested, or are being sought, for the movie.
Sony Pictures, part of Sony Corp, did not return a request for comment on the casting.
The movie will be the first Tarantino film to be released without the Weinstein Company following allegations by more than 70 women of sexual misconduct against its former chief executive Harvey Weinstein.
Weinstein, who has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone, was fired last November and his independent production company is currently up for sale.
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LOS ANGELES - Quentin Tarantino has admitted knowing for decades about Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct, confessing in an interview published Thursday to feeling ashamed that he did not stop working with the mogul.
The explosive admission to The New York Times came with allegations of assault and harassment mounting against the disgraced Hollywood tycoon as Los Angeles police announced they were investigating a sixth sex attack allegation.
"I knew enough to do more than I did," Oscar-winning Tarantino, 54, told the paper of his friend and mentor, citing several episodes involving prominent actresses.
"There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn't secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things."
Weinstein, 65, is accused of decades of sexual abuse and harassment by around 40 actresses, including stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Mira Sorvino, Tarantino's ex-girlfriend.
The veteran producer, who resigned from the board of The Weinstein Company this week, having already been sacked as its co-chairman, has so far denied all allegations of forcing himself on his accusers.
Tarantino said in the Times interview that he had heard about Weinstein's behavior long before investigations by that paper and the New Yorker which prompted a flood of further allegations.
'MARGINALIZE THE INCIDENTS'
"I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him," Tarantino said.
Sorvino, who dated the director in the mid-1990s, told him Weinstein had made unwanted advances while another actress made similar allegations years later that Tarantino also knew about, according to the Times.
The director said he was also aware that Weinstein had settled with the actress Rose McGowan.
"What I did was marginalize the incidents," Tarantino said, admitting that he had dismissed them as "mild misbehavior."
"Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse," added the filmmaker, who won best screenplay Oscars for black comedy western "Django Unchained" in 2013 and cult favorite "Pulp Fiction" in 1995.
Weinstein and Tarantino have worked closely for decades since the producer distributed "Reservoir Dogs," in 1992.
The pair also collaborated on "Pulp Fiction," the "Kill Bill" films, "Inglourious Basterds" and "The Hateful Eight."
The Los Angeles Police Department told AFP detectives had interviewed a "potential sexual assault victim involving Weinstein" which allegedly occurred in 2013.
The opening of a probe in LA follows two sex crime investigations launched by police in New York, with London's Metropolitan Police also pursuing allegations made by three women.
The new case takes Weinstein's potential legal woes to a new level as it falls within the 10-year statute of limitations for the crime that existed at the time of the alleged incident, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Until now, most of the accusations Weinstein faced were more than a decade old.
'WITHOUT WARNING'
The Italian model-actress, then 34, met with officers for more than two hours on Thursday to offer a detailed account of her allegations against Weinstein, the newspaper reported.
The woman, who has asked not to be named, fearing reprisals, told the Times the incident occurred at the Mr. C Beverly Hills hotel after she attended the 8th annual Los Angeles, Italia Film, Fashion and Art Fest in February 2013.
He showed up "without warning" in the lobby and asked to come up to her room, she told the Times. She said she offered instead to meet him downstairs, but added that he was soon knocking on her door.
"He... bullied his way into my hotel room, saying, 'I'm not going to [have sex with] you, I just want to talk,'" the mother-of-three is quoted as telling the Times.
"Once inside, he asked me questions about myself, but soon became very aggressive and demanding and kept asking to see me naked. He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do. He then dragged me to the bathroom and forcibly raped me."
She said she was too afraid to report Weinstein, instead telling a priest, a friend and a nanny what had happened, but decided to come forward at the request of her children.
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