Well, this is crummy. A few months ago, Quentin Tarantino announced that his next project was going to be a “spaghetti western”, somewhat in the veins of his highly popular Django Unchained. Some time later he announced the title of his project as being The Hateful Eight, with potential actors including Tim Roth, Bruce Dern and Michael Madsen.
Now, Taratino announced that he has canned the project altogether.
The reasoning? He handed exclusive copies of the script to six people of whom he deeply trusted, but somehow the script got handed to one of their agents and has now leaked online. Tarantino talks to Deadline regarding the betrayal:
“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 [expletive] agents work, but I’m not making this next.”
Poor guy. I know we’ve all experienced the sting of betrayal at least once in our lives, but somehow having it being the reason that your entire project has been canned just makes it feel all the more worse. So what does Taratino plan to do with his script?
“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.”
Well, I’ll give him this: he definitely can make a comeback. Many artists would feel discouraged or even defeated with this shocking revelation, but Taratino is choosing to step up and move on. I like it.
Keep it up, good sir. I’ll be reading The Hateful Eight as soon as it hits shelves. And don’t worry: I won’t use a torrent either.
-David Dunn
Sources: Deadline, Film Variety
DAVID DUNN 