EXCLUSIVE: Deadline broke last July 11 that Quentin Tarantino had met with Margot Robbie and asked her to play Sharon Tate in his next film. She now has the offer and negotiations are underway to make it a reality. Robbie, who’s coming off her Oscar-nominated turn in the title role of I, Tonya, will join Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Quentin Tarantino has yet to shoot a single frame of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but that didn’t stop the Oscar-winning writer and director from predicting great things from his forthcoming Tinseltown epic.

At Sony Pictures’ CinemaCon presentation on Monday night, Tarantino said Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the film’s two leading men, will be “the most exciting dynamic star duo since Paul Newman and Robert Redford.”

Pitt wasn’t on hand in Las Vegas, but DiCaprio flanked Tarantino on the Caesars Palace stage, telling the audience of theater owners that the film boasts “one of the most amazing screenplays [the writer-director] has ever written.”

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is shrouded in mystery, but Tarantino has said that it takes place in 1969. The Manson family murders are reportedly going to factor into a larger tapestry of a changing movie business — it’s a time when the studio system was collapsing and a rising generation of young turks was taking its place, bringing with them revolutionary on-screen depictions of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.

“It takes place at the height of the counterculture explosion,” said Tarantino. “It takes place at the time of the hippie revolution, and it takes place at the height of new Hollywood.”

He added that the film will be the most similar in style and plotting to his 1994 masterwork, “Pulp Fiction.”

Tarantino, who owns the New Beverly Cinema, a historic revival house in Los Angeles, won over the crowd of theater owners by noting that he was also an exhibitor.

“I love movies and I love movies in movie theaters,” said Tarantino. “They are my favorite place in the world.”

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” hits theaters on August 9, 2019. That marks the fiftieth anniversary of actress Sharon Tate’s murder at the hands of Charles Manson’s followers.

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino is expanding the cast of his upcoming film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. He is in talks with Burt Reynolds to play George Spahn, and also in early discussions with his The Hateful Eight co-stars Tim Roth, Kurt Russell and Michael Madsen to play smaller roles in the film. They would join Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who are already set.

Reynolds has a great role in front of him, maybe the best one the iconic Deliverance star has gotten since Boogie Nights. Spahn was an 80-year old near blind man who rented his LA ranch out to be used as the location for Westerns. Charlie Manson convinced Spahn to allow him and his followers to live on the ranch, in the months before they murdered Sharon Tate and six others. In exchange for rent, Manson coerced his female followers into hopping into bed with the ranch owner, and serving as his seeing eye guides, per reports.

Tarantino has provided the chance for film audiences to rediscover great actors from the ’70s who were largely forgotten about, from David Carradine to John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, and Michael Parks to name a few. What an opportunity he’s got here with Reynolds. I always loved this guy’s work growing up, and interviewed him when he released his memoir Enough About Me. I cannot recall enjoying an interview with an actor as much as I did Reynolds. He was so gracious in reliving everything from competing with Clint Eastwood for the title of Hollywood’s top star — Reynolds said he and Eastwood got fired same time from Universal early on, Eastwood for his prominent adam’s apple and Reynolds because they thought he wasn’t any good. Reynolds told Eastwood his friend had bigger problems because there wasn’t much he could do with his adam’s apple but that Reynolds could always learn to act. His recounting of the killer roles he turned down, all the gorgeous women he romanced, all the injuries he suffered doing his own stunts, being hated by Marlon Brando because he made the actor insecure, becoming Carson’s permanent Tonight Show host, palling around with Bette Davis and hearing her wit and venom…suffice to say, there isn’t an actor who is as ripe to be rediscovered on the big stage as is Reynolds, who told me back then he was pining for just this kind of a chance for a comeback.

Tarantino’s film has been referred to as a Pulp Fiction-like tapestry stories with characters around LA in the summer of 1969, before the Manson murders were committed. Sony Pictures stepped up to acquire the film and it is set for August 9, 2019 release worldwide. Sony described the film as a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), former star of a western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate.”

It wasn’t clear what roles Roth, Russell and Madsen will play. Besides The Hateful Eight, Roth has starred in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, and Madsen starred in Reservoir Dogs and the Kill Bill films.

Deadline broke last July that Tarantino had met with Margot Robbie to play Sharon Tate, and sources said those talks are ongoing.

The casting on Tarantino’s film that is about to go into production is important Cannes news. Tarantino loves bringing his films here, and it is impossible to imagine Once Upon A Time In Hollywood won’t be a huge title on the Croisette in 2019.

Reynolds is repped by Abrams Artists and Link Entertainment; Roth is CAA and Jackoway Tyerman; Russell is CAA and Madsen is BR Talent.

EXCLUSIVE: Timothy Olyphant is negotiating to co-star in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, the film Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed and is prepping for production in Los Angeles for Sony Pictures. I am not sure whether Olyphant will play a fictional or real character, but he will join Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Burt Reynolds, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell and Michael Madsen in a Pulp Fiction-like tapestry that covers a group of characters in LA during the summer of 1969, up to the moment where Charles Manson’s followers murdered Sharon Tate and others in a shocking night of savagery.

Olyphant’s schedule had to be reworked around his TV show The Santa Clarita Diet, but the problems have been overcome and a deal is being worked out. Olyphant is repped by UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has added to its cast of characters wandering about in Los Angeles at the time Charles Manson’s Sharon Tate murders.

The Sony pic has brought aboard Damian Lewis, Luke Perry, Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning, Clifton Collins Jr, Keith Jefferson and Nicholas Hammond in supporting roles for a lineup that already includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Burt Reynolds, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Madsen and Tim Roth.

As befits a Tarantino pic, the casting intrigues: Lewis will play the iconic actor Steve McQueen; Fanning is set as Squeaky Fromme, the Manson disciple who later tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford; Hammond will play director Sam Wanamaker; and Hirsch is Jay Sebring, the Hollywood hairstylist who was one of four victims in the Tate murders on Cielo Drive.

Perry is set to play Scotty Lancer, Collins is Ernesto The Mexican Vaquero, and Keith Jefferson is Land Pirate Keith. It’s the third Tarantino film for Jefferson, who also appeared in The Hateful Eight and Django Unchained.

The Tarantino pic has been referred to as a Pulp Fiction-like tapestry of stories set in L.A. in the summer of 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), former star of a Western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor: Tate (Robbie).

David Heyman, Tarantino and Shannon McIntosh are producing, and the studio has set it for an August 9, 2019 release worldwide.