Quentin Tarantino may not have a new film coming out anytime soon, but the novelization of his most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is set to release June 29. And we’ve just learned that Jennifer Jason Leigh, who worked with Tarantino on his 2015 Western thriller, The Hateful Eight, would be narrating the new audiobook.
“Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited first work of fiction — at once hilarious, delicious, and brutal – is the always surprising, sometimes shocking new novel based on his Academy Award-winning film,” reads the book’s synopsis. “Rick Dalton: Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it? Cliff Booth: Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have gotten away with murder. Sharon Tate: She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills. Charles Manson: The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. Hollywood 1969: you shoulda been there.”
Leigh’s voice will deliver the 11-hour audiobook, which is currently available to pre-order. The book will arrive as a mass market paperback this summer and a deluxe hardcover will release this fall.
“In the seventies, movie novelizations were the first adult books I grew up reading,” Tarantino recently said on the Pure Cinema Podcast. “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.”