Varietyhas announced that Al Pacino will join the cast of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Charles Manson movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’ll be the first time Pacino works with Tarantino, and the legendary actor joins the already stacked cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Burt Reynolds, and Timothy Olyphant, among others.
Pacino is set to play Marvin Shwarz, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s agent. DiCaprio stars as, Rick Dalton, a former TV star, alongside Pitt, who will play his longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth. Dalton’s next door neighbor is Sharon Tate—played by Robbie—who was a famous actress and one of the most famous victims of the murderous Manson family cult.
The movie will be set in Los Angeles in 1969, and will be released on August 9, 2019, pegged to the 50th anniversary of the day the Manson family murdered two members of the LaBianca family, which was also the day after the Manson family killed Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frysowski. Charles Manson died last year at the age of 83.
Tarantino said in a statement released to Deadline when Pitt was cast that he’s been “working 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.”
The 50th anniversary of the crime is inspiring a long list of projects related to the murders. Sharon Tate’s sister Debra publicly called out one of them, an independent movie based on Tate’s murder called The Haunting of Sharon Tate, which is set to star Hillary Duff, as “exploitative” and “classless.” Deadline reports Debra has also spoken out against Tarantino’s upcoming movie, though she has supported a Kate Bosworth project titled Tate, which will center on the last day of Sharon’s life.
Finally, Matt Smith will play Manson alongside Suki Waterhouse in Mary Harron's film Charlie Says, which will focus on the young women who joined Manson’s “family” and their convictions.
