By now everyone is pretty well aware that someone, somewhere tanked The Hateful Eight by leaking the first draft of Quentin Tarantino’s script for the movie. After the leak, most likely by one of the film’s actors or the agent of one of the actors, Tarantino pulled the plug on the project, opting instead to publish the script and table the movie for the foreseeable future. Now, thanks to the same leak that caused Tarantino to change course on the film, we’re hearing a bit about what we will be missing out on.
According to The Wrap:
“The script is an ensemble Western with obvious parts for Madsen and Dern, as well as Tarantino stalwarts like Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. Jackson and Madsen would likely both play bounty hunters returning human plunder to a town called Red Rock in exchange for hefty rewards. Their characters, a former major in the Union army and a man named John Ruth, dominate the first two of the script’s five chapters.
They run into a Southerner named Chris Mannix on the road, and three of them, along with their driver — a living prisoner and three dead bounties strapped to the roof — arrive at a haberdashery to take shelter from an oncoming blizzard. Yet the proprietors, Minnie, Sweet Dave and her other colleagues, are nowhere to be found. In their place are four men, a Southern general (likely Dern), an alleged hangman, a Frenchman named Bob and a cowboy named Joe Gage.
Mistrust, coffee and violence ensue.”
Another detail to make film buffs super bummed out is that Tarantino apparently meant for the movie to be shot on 70-millimeter film, a format that lends itself to sweeping panoramic views and was recently used to great effect by Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master. It isn’t a cheap format to film on, so Tarantino was clearly ready to pull out all the stops with this one.
Maybe one day, once Tarantino has gotten over the sting of his script being leaked, he will reconsider and we will get to see a version of The Hateful Eight that is all the stronger for the scrutiny it will no doubt receive. For now, though, we will just have to wait for word from the man himself on what his next project will be.
