Tarantino Shelving HATEFUL EIGHT After Script Leaks

If you were looking forward to Quentin Tarantino’s next project, the western The Hateful Eight, then we have some bad news for you. The director is shelving the project after the screenplay was leaked by someone connected to the small number of people he had shared it with.

Speaking with Deadline, Tarantino explained that he decided to cancel the project today after his agent started getting calls from other agents pitching their clients for roles in the film. Roles they couldn’t have known about if it weren’t for an unauthorized leak of the screenplay.

I’m very, very depressed. 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.

Sounding rather upset, Tarantino was not afraid to name names.

I gave it to one of the producers on Django Unchained, Reggie Hudlin, and he let an agent come to his house and read it. That’s a betrayal, but not crippling because the agent didn’t end up with the script. There is an ugly maliciousness to the rest of it. I gave it to three actors: Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth. 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.

Deadline’s Mike Fleming spoke to sources at CAA the agency that reps Dern, and they claimed that they were not the source of the leak. Of course, that could just be some industrial strength ass-covering going on.

This is not the first time that a Tarantino screenplay has gotten out into the wild. Both Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained made the rounds as the director was getting ready to shoot those films. And they quickly found their ways into the hands of a number of internet film writers. Tarantino doesn’t try and say that he was upset that those screenplays leaked, but he did admit that he preferred the timing of when those were made public.

I am not talking out of both sides of my mouth, because I do like the fact that everyone eventually posts it, gets it and reviews it on the net. Frankly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I like the fact that people like my shit, and that they go out of their way to find it and read it. But I gave it to six motherfucking people!

Tarantino is not closing the door entirely on the possibility of making the film, but it will be a while before he can move past the feelings of betrayal in order to do so. In the meantime, he is looking at getting the screenplay published and then moving on to a new project.

I could totally change my mind; I own the fucking thing. But I can tell you, it’s not going to be the next thing I do. It’s my baby, and if the muse calls me later to do it, we’ll do it. I was thinking about the idea of maybe publishing it before I made it, but now that deal happens for sure, and I’m not doing it next.