Quentin Tarantino Releasing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Novel Next Year

Many films have ended up with novelizations, but few of those are actually written by the filmmaker. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is set to be the rare exception. HarperCollins has announced that they’ve signed a deal with Tarantino for two books: a nonfiction book going deep into cinema in the 1970s and the novelization of his Oscar-nominated love letter to the 1960s film industry, which starred Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie.

You can see the cover art for the paperback edition of the book, which will be published next summer by HarperCollins in mass-market paperback as well as e-book and in a digital audio edition. The novel will feature an extended look at the lives of actor Rick Dalton (played by DiCaprio in the film) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt), charting their lives both forward and backward in time including more detail on their time in Italy. It will also introduce characters not seen in the film such as Burt Reynolds, Pete Duel, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson.

“In the seventies movie novelizations were the first adult books I grew up reading,” Tarantino said in a statement to Deadline. “And to this day I have a tremendous amount of affection for the genre. So as a movie-novelization aficionado, I’m proud to announce ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ my contribution to this often marginalized, yet beloved sub-genre in literature. I’m also thrilled to further explore my characters and their world in a literary endeavor that can (hopefully) sit alongside its cinematic counterpart.”

The nonfiction book will be titled Cinema Speculation and will feature “a rich mix of essays, reviews, personal writing and tantalizing ‘what if’s’ about the films of the ’70s.