David Fincher cut roughly 60 pages from Quentin Tarantino’s original screenplay for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth before the cameras rolled. The project marks the return of Brad Pitt as Hollywood stuntman Cliff Booth, a role that earned him an Oscar. Tarantino wrote the script but chose not to direct it himself. Pitt, who has a history with Fincher, helped set the arrangement in motion, and the release is locked.

While most directors fight to keep every page, Fincher arrived with scissors, and his reason is not what anyone expects.

David Fincher cut roughly 60 pages from Quentin Tarantino’s original screenplay for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth before filming began. The first draft ran 230 pages, which Fincher felt was essentially two movies. The cuts helped shape the final film into a roughly two-hour-and-twenty-minute feature.

“The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies,” Fincher told Empire.

The director then added, “It wasn’t about the plot" as Fincher explained that the story was less about the plot and more about the characters and their intersecting lives in the back alleys of 1977 Hollywood.

Empire gathered both men for a joint interview, and Fincher described the film as a story told around a bonfire. He also spoke of a Venn diagram where the interests of Pitt, Tarantino, and himself overlapped, giving the team areas to focus on rather than wants to chase. The story is set in 1977, eight years after Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, with Booth now working as a fixer.

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While Fincher tended the bonfire of trimmed pages, Tarantino was busy handing out the highest compliment a director can receive.

Quentin Tarantino named David Fincher his favorite director on the podcast The Church of Tarantino, and he did not stop at a polite nod. He placed himself on the same level as Fincher, calling both of them among the best in the industry. The remark lands just as Fincher takes charge of a film, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, that Tarantino wrote and Netflix acquired. Tarantino said he likes the idea of great directors adapting his work.

Fincher’s film arrives for a two-week IMAX run on November 25 before landing on Netflix on December 23. Tarantino told The Graham Norton Show that the script for his tenth and final film is finished, though a play called The Popinjay Cavalier comes first, with Sacha Baron Cohen in the lead at London’s Phoenix Theatre. Until then, Fincher stays in the director’s chair. Fincher holds the praise and the scissors.

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What are your thoughts on David Fincher cutting 60 pages from Quentin Tarantino’s original script for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth? Let us know in the comments.