353 Days Until "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"
Tuesday, August 7, 2018 at 11:14AM
NATHANIEL R in Burt Reynolds, Costume Design, Dakota Fanning, Emile Hirsch, James Marsden, Margot Robbie, Movies About Movies, Nicholas Hammond, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Sharon Tate

Behold. It's the first image of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is still a year off, as it won't hit theaters until July 26th, 2019. The release date was originally August 9th, a tasteless choice as that will be the 50th anniversary of Sharon Tate's grisly murder at the hands of Charles Manson's followers. Tate was famously married to Roman Polanski and 8 months pregnant at the time (Tess, an Oscared hit in 1980, was dedicated to Tate, who had hoped Polanski would adapt it to screen). No signs of pregnancy in this photo so perhaps the film will not go there directly (we hope not).

The lead characters are a fictional actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt)...

The costumes are by frequent Madonna collaborator and two-time Oscar nominee Arianne Phillips. This is her first time working with Tarantino.

She's not the only first-time collaborator among the visual crew. Though Tarantino always keeps cinematographer Robert Richardson around, he also has a fresh production designer, Barbara Ling (). You can see they're recreating old movie theaters here from these set photos below.

The script appears to be a mixture of fictional characters and real life people and events, so Robbie isn't the only actor playing a famous star. Damian Lewis and Mike Moh will appear as Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee, respectively. No word yet on who will be playing Roman Polanski (or whether or not he'll even be portrayed in the film).

Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, longtime friendsThere are a lot of 'above the title' style actors in the movie (Pacino, DiCaprio, Pitt, Robbie) but we personally like it best when Tarantino takes less acclaimed or formerly more successful actors and reinvents them, so we're interested to see these five in particular: Burt Reynolds plays George Spahn, a blind man who rented his ranch to the Manson family before the murders and slept with some of Manson's followers; Dakota Fanning plays 'Squeaky' Fromme, one of the more infamous member of Manson's cult; Emile Hirsch is Jay Sebring, Tate's former lover, close friend, and a hairstylist to the stars (Steve McQueen gave the eulogy at his funeral); James Marsden in an unknown role, but Marsden has never gotten his due for all that range and talent, we don't think; and Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich from The Sound of Music !!! and the first live action Spider-Man) portrays actor/director Sam Wanamaker. 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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