Quentin Tarantino mothballs ‘Hateful Eight’ after script leak

Moviegoers eager to return to the Wild West with “Django Unchained” writer-director Quentin Tarantino shouldn’t hold their breath, as the filmmaker has reportedly put his ensemble western “The Hateful Eight” on hold after the script leaked.

According to a Deadline report, Tarantino gave the script to a handful of actors and one of them or their representatives allowed it to get out into the wild. Tarantino is so irate over the leak that he will now no longer direct the film as his next project, he said. Instead he plans to publish the screenplay and possibly revisit it in the coming years.

“I’m very, very depressed,” Tarantino told Deadline. “I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today.”

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Tarantino learned of the leak when his agent, Mike Simpson, began receiving phone calls about the script. The director said he had given the “Hateful Eight” script to three actors he has worked with before: Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Tim Roth.

Tarantino absolved Roth and said, “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 … agents work, but I’m not making this next. I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now.” He added, “I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”

Back in November, Tarantino went on “The Tonight Show” and told Jay Leno his next film would be a western. “I had so much fun making ‘Django’ and I love westerns so much, that after I taught myself how to make one I thought, it’s like, wow OK, let me make another one now that I know what I’m doing,” he said.

Tarantino fans do have reason to be hopeful, however, as the director admitted, “I could totally change my mind.” He also said he has another script in mind. “The idea was, I was going to write two scripts,” Tarantino said. “I wasn’t going to shoot the western until next winter, and I have been full of piss and vinegar about the other one. So now I’ll do that one.”

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