In what may be the biggest case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in recent Hollywood memory, Quentin Tarantino has revealed he’s shelved what was likely to be his next movie, The Hateful Eight, after the script leaked. Normally this would be an annoyance but wouldn’t stop a film moving forward, but for Quentin it’s enough to get him to stop working on it as a movie.
The director only recently finished the first draft of the western and was eyeing Christoph Waltz and Bruce Dern for roles in the film. The filmmaker apparently gave his script to six people, including Django Unchained executive producer Reginald Hudlin and actors Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Bruce Dern. It appears it got out after one of them passed it to their agent to read.
Talking to Deadline, Tarantino says, “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…
“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. I don’t know how these fucking agents work, but I’m not making this next. I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now. I give it out to six people and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got ten more where that came from.”
Quentin apparently suspects the leak came through Bruce Dern’s agent, although he holds nothing against the actor himself. Dern’s agency vehemently denies the claim.
There is a possibility he’s just having a hissy fit and he’ll change his mind, as he acknowledges, “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. The idea was, I was going to write two scripts. 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.”
As yet we don’t know what that other one will be.