Yesterday brought our first look at The Hateful Eight via Entertainment Weekly’s cover, but now that the magazine has hit stands, seven new shots from the Quentin Tarantino-directed Western are available for your viewing pleasure.
Highlighted by the new images are stars Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Madsen and Samuel L. Jackson, all dressed up in some ridiculous outfits. The print edition of Entertainment Weekly also provided some further insights into the pic, with Jason Leigh saying of the relationship between her collared outlaw and Kurt Russell’s bounty hunter that the pair “are essentially the most dysfunctional couple since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” If the two character are romantically involved, as hinted by the actress’ hand on Russell’s shoulder in the cover shot, it’s certainly easy to see how that could be the case.
Tarantino also talked openly about the arc of his career in the issue, noting that he’s determined to keep making his own, distinctive brand of movie for as long as he can avoid studio interference:
“Hollywood has changed a whole lot, and if I had to change with it, I wouldn’t even make it to 60. I signed up for one film industry and I’m not signing up for the other one. That’s not why I got into this.”
The director added that The Hateful Eight should be just as energetic and fun as some of his earlier films:
“I want there to be a connection to the young artist’s spirit that was there in Reservoir Dogs. I don’t want to be one of those old-man directors; I want there to be some form of aesthetic connection, a vitality, from my first film to whatever is my last film.”
If early impressions are accurate, that certainly won’t be a problem for The Hateful Eight. The story – eight gunslingers are holed up in a mountainside stopover during a blizzard, only to turn on each other – sounds promising, and the cast Tarantino has assembled is one of his best.
The Hateful Eight opens later this year.
In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff.
Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…
