The big news recently was Quentin Tarantino‘s decision to not make his planned ensemble Western, The Hateful Eight, after the script leaked. While some pranksters attempted to pass off Seth MacFarlane‘s script for A Million Ways to Die in the West as the leaked script yesterday, it seems the actual screenplay has found its way into the hands of a few outlets along with news Tarantino planned on making the film in the 70mm format Paul Thomas Anderson recently utilized for The Master.
As for the film’s plot, The Wrap offers the following summary:
The script is an ensemble Western with obvious parts for Madsen and Dern, as well as Tarantino stalwarts like Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. Jackson and Madsen would likely both play bounty hunters returning human plunder to a town called Red Rock in exchange for hefty rewards. Their characters, a former major in the Union army and a man named John Ruth, dominate the first two of the script’s five chapters.
They run into a Southerner named Chris Mannix on the road, and three of them, along with their driver — a living prisoner and three dead bounties strapped to the roof — arrive at a haberdashery to take shelter from an oncoming blizzard. Yet the proprietors, Minnie, Sweet Dave and her other colleagues, are nowhere to be found. In their place are four men, a Southern general (likely Dern), an alleged hangman, a Frenchman named Bob and a cowboy named Joe Gage.
Mistrust, coffee and violence ensue.
It’s hardly revealing, but it gives you an idea what we could have expected. As for the five chapters referenced above they are reportedly labeled as “Last Stage to Red Rock”, “Son of A Gun”, “Minnie’s”, “The Four Passengers” and “Black Night, White Hell”.
To go along with all of this, Badass Digest posted the following first page of the screenplay while the image above is a redacted scene courtesy of The Wrap.
As for the fate of the film, I’m not exactly torn up over the fact it won’t be made. I agree it’s unfair Tarantino had to scrap it due to feeling he was betrayed, but the fun in looking forward to a new Tarantino film is the excitement over what territory he’s going to cover next and while The Hateful Eight clearly isn’t a Django Unchained rehash, Tarantino’s love for cinema is deep enough that I know there is something more exciting in that brain than another Western.
