Before a single frame of footage had been shot, Quentin Tarantino’s Western The Hateful Eight was making headlines in a very bad way. A copy of the script got leaked to the ‘net, which displeased the Pulp Fiction filmmaker to such a degree that he called the project off altogether for a while. Then, after tempers cooled, Tarantino revisited the idea and realized just how terrific it was. So, he organized a live reading and proceeded to cast the participating actors in a film version of The Hateful Eight.
At Comic-Con, Tarantino confirmed that the project was set for release in 2015, and an official poster has just landed online promising the same thing. Though ambiguous, the poster is a very cool image – not that we’d expect anything else from the director – that will surely find a permanent home on college dorm walls across the county.
The Hateful Eight now boasts a cast that includes Bruce Dern, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Walton Goggins and Zoe Bell. That’s a pretty stellar lineup, and it’s great to see that Dern is still involved despite the script-leaking controversy having been tracked back to the Nebraska Oscar nominee’s agent.
Tarantino has done great things with the Western genre before, and with a cast this good, The Hateful Eight is definitely going to be one of our most anticipated films of next year. It’s likely going to arrive in December, but that’s fine by us – so long as we get more of these stylish promo posters in the meantime.
The Hateful Eight follows the steadily ratcheting tension that develops after a blizzard diverts a stagecoach from its route, and traps a pitiless and mistrustful group which includes a competing pair of bounty hunters, a renegade Confederate soldier, and a female prisoner in a saloon in the middle of nowhere.