The Hateful Eight Shelved By Tarantino After Leak

This is why we can’t have nice things. In this era of spoilers and spillage, it should come as no surprise that even Quentin Tarantino would taste sour betrayal from within his inner cirlce. Apparently, his latest script has leaked and his response is quite surprising.

Initially set to go before the lens next winter, Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight has been pulled off the docket and may see life as a novel first thanks to a pair of unidentified loose lips.

Unidentified for now, that is. It seems that Tarantino only released his script to six people, among them producer Reggie Hudlin (Django Unchained), and actors Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth (but not Samuel L. Jackson or Christoph Waltz). Stay cool, Honey Bunny, it seems like Roth is in the clear, as is Hudlin, though he did show it to his agent as well.

Here’s Tarantino’s statement to Deadline’s Mike Fleming (who broke the story) on what went down:

“The one I know didn’t do this is Tim Roth. One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood. I don’t know how these fucking agents work, but I’m not making this next. I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now. I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”

The “10 more where that came from” boast is a thrilling little nugget, but it sounds like it might be a slight exaggeration in that it seemingly comes in a moment of high frustration from a man who recently hinted at retirement.

To be clear, Tarantino does seem to be quite immersed in “the next thing”, so hopefully something else will roll next winter, but doesn’t this all feel a bit rash?

Even though so many people both abhor spoilers and seek them out, many of Tarantino fans would likely avoid or be oblivious to the existence of a leaked script. As we’re apparently about to see, the overall Tarantino magic means more than just words on a page. It’s the performances, the soundtrack, and the rhythm of the dialogue that can’t be equalled by our own imaginations.

It’s great that Tarantino allows for the possibility that he might change his mind and revisit this, but in that he immediately reiterates that this won’t be next and in that it was only a first draft, it’s natural to wonder if this film will stay dead.

Some of us are still waiting for Killer Crow, Kill Bill Vol. 3, and the Vega Brothers film. So it’s not like Tarantino hasn’t shelved things for good before.

I guess time will tell, but right now I’m sitting here wondering if this could have all been avoided had Tarantino asked Samuel L. Jackson to shout terms and conditions at people before he handed over a copy of his script. 

Via Deadline

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