The Hateful Eight will have some familiar Tarantino actors as well as newcomers to the director’s recognizable style
21 Jump Street and Magic Mike star Channing Tatum has joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming film Hateful Eight, along with Demián Bichir, an Oscar-nominated actor from Mexico probably still most recognized for his role in Showtime’s Weeds as a drug cartel boss and boyfriend of Mary Louise Parker’s character.
The Weinstein Company confirmed the lineup for the 2015 Western that is “set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War” in “the wintry Wyoming landscape,” according to a press release.
The Hateful Eight remains on course to shoot in January, with Tarantino expected to utilise large-format film. Distributor the Weinstein Company said in September that the movie would have the widest 70mm release in more than 20 years.
Tararantino abandoned plans for The Hateful Eight in January in a fit of pique after a version of the script was leaked on to the internet, but later backtracked. He staged a live reading of the movie’s screenplay at the United Artists theatre in Los Angeles in April with Jackson, Dern, Madsen, Russell, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Walton Goggins and Zoe Bell taking the main roles.
Quentin Tarantino withdrew his lawsuit against the website Gawker for linking to his unproduced screenplay, The Hateful Eight, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Sparked by the decision of a US judge last month to throw out the copyright suit for contributory infringement – a form of secondary liability – the Oscar-winning film-maker said he was retracting his own motion “without prejudice”, which gives him the right to refile the suit at a later date.
Tarantino’s motion states: “This dismissal is made without prejudice, whereby plaintiff may later advance an action and refile a complaint after further investigations to ascertain and plead the identities of additional infringers resulting from Gawker Media’s contributory copyright infringement, by its promotion, aiding and abetting and materially contributing to the dissemination to third parties of unauthorised copies of plaintiff’s copyrighted work.”
Tarantino claimed that Gawker “crossed the journalistic line” when it linked to a leaked copy of the 146-page screenplay in January. But a US district court judge said the director had failed to make his case and invited him to refile.
The draft of a screenplay for Tarantino’s film was leaked by an unnamed Hollywood agent. The director subsequently abandoned the project, but at a public reading of the script last month in Los Angeles admitted he was still working on it.
The Hateful Eight has been likened to the director’s early work, including Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and has been described as a story about bounty hunters who transports prisoners through 19th-century Wyoming.
