Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight Would Have Filmed In 70mm, Plot Details Revealed

When the news broke earlier this week that Quentin Tarantino was shelving his script called The Hateful Eight, I was of two minds. Part of me was disappointed that there is a Tarantino movie out there that will potentially never get made, but the other half was excited by the prospect of the filmmaker moving away from the Western genre (which he already experimented with brilliantly in Django Unchained) and try out something new and different. Now that some details about the script have leaked out, however, I find myself really, really wishing that Tarantino will change his mind.

The Wrap has gotten its hands on a copy of the Hateful Eight screenplay and has revealed some incredibly fascinating details that suggest the movie could be one of the Oscar winning writer/director's most interesting works yet. The story begins by following a pair of bounty hunters - expected to be played by Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Madsen - as they make their way to a small town called Red Rock with a prisoner in search of a reward. After picking up a few other travelers on the road, the men eventually find themselves in a haberdashery where they can " take shelter from an oncoming blizzard." Inside the men's clothing store they encounter four others: "a Southern general (likely Dern), an alleged hangman, a Frenchman named Bob and a cowboy named Joe Gage."

Unlike Tarantino's more recent work, which have been sprawling epics with wide scopes, The Hateful Eight takes place almost entirely within two locations: the bounty hunter's stagecoach and the haberdashery. The writer/director hasn't made a movie that intimate since his debut, Reservoir Dogs, in 1992. What makes it even more amazing, though, is that Tarantino planned to film the whole thing using 70mm film - following in the footsteps of what Paul Thomas Anderson did for The Master in 2012. The Wrap adds that the movie would have also had all of the Tarantino flourishes we love and that the script involves, "a little Russian roulette, some vomit and frequent duplicity."

I've been silently hoping for a while that Tarantino would try something more intimate with his next project, and now I am totally devastated that this one may not get made. The filmmaker did say that he may revisit the script five years from now and see how he feels about the betrayal that caused him to drop it in the first place, but that's hardly a guarantee. For those of you who want to read the full screenplay, the good news is that Tarantino plans to publish it as a book in the next few months, so it will be available to the public soon.

Now that these details have come out, how do you feel about Tarantino no longer wanting to make The Hateful Eight? Do you hope he reconsiders his stance, or are you happy he's going to try making something else? Let us know what you're thinking in the comments section below.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.