Quentin Tarantino has been making a splash with his upcoming ninth film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, which features actors portraying various Tinseltown celebrities in the late 1960s.
While Tarantino reached out to the families of some of the stars portrayed in the film, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a fading movie star and Brad Pitt portrays his stunt double, that hasn’t always been the case.
One of the most arresting parts of the film’s trailer involves sequences featuring “Enter the Dragon” star Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh (“Marvel’s The Unhumans”), yet the daughter of the late martial arts legend says she never heard from Tarantino about her father being portrayed in the film.
Speaking with Deadline, Shannon Lee – who controls her father’s estate – expresses her “annoyance” that Tarantino never bothered to contact her.
“In these instances, there are a lot of different ways you can go,” Lee explained. “If they contacted me I could be completely unreasonable and a pain in the a** and make all kinds of ridiculous demands, but they don’t know that I’m not going to do that. A lot of times, the best practice is, ‘We’ll just stay away from that so we don’t have to even open that can of worms.’”
However, Lee admitted that since Tarantino has already gone on record to reveal he contacted the sister of slain actress Sharon Tate (who is a character in the movie), she’s not clear why Tarantino didn’t give her a similar call.
“With Tarantino’s film, to not have been included in any kind of way, when I know that he reached out to other people but did not reach out to me, there’s a level of annoyance – and there’s part of me that says this is not worth my time and my energy,” she added. “Let’s just see how the universe deals with this one.”
ET Canada has reached out to a rep for Tarantino for comment.
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” comes to theatres on July 26.
