Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight almost didn't happen due to a script leak earlier this year - so now that the famed writer/director has finished working on his latest draft, he's going to some extreme lengths to make sure that it doesn't get leaked again.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Quentin Tarantino and The Weinstein Company are currently in the process of finding investors to pick up the rights to The Hateful Eight at the on-going American Film Market - but what's different about the sale is that it is an invite-only affair. Insiders say that that potential buyers are being given special invites to the Weinstein Company's Beverly Hills office where they are given the opportunity to sit down and read the most recent draft of the screenplay. While there, they are closely watched and "supervised by staffers."
It's not hard to understand why Quentin Tarantino has upped security around this project. All the way back in January the Oscar-winning filmmaker publicly announced that he was shelving his Hateful Eight script due to a "personal betrayal" that led to the screenplay being leaked (first to insiders and then on the internet). After that, Tarantino filed a lawsuit against Gawker for providing their readers access to the script. Eventually the legal dispute ended and the director even hosted a very special live-reading of the screenplay with an all-star cast performing the roles. But now that the script has been revised and production is imminent, Tarantino is making sure that The Hateful Eight doesn't make it to the public again.
A key reason why the script is being protected now is the fact that it's sporting a whole new ending. During the live reading, Tarantino reportedly told the audience that it would be the only time the story would ever play out with its original finale (which I won't spoil here, but can be found over on THR). The trade report says that the film is divided into five different sections and that the fifth, titled ""Black Night, White Hell." has undergone extensive changes.
Set in the post-Civil War West, The Hateful Eight begins centered on a bounty hunter who is taking a long journey to return a prisoner for a reward. Along the way they join up with some other travelers, but eventually they are forced to take shelter from a blizzard in a haberdashery - where they meet a bunch of other rough characters hiding from the cold storm. Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, Denis Menochet, Bruce Dern and Jennifer Jason Leigh will all star in the movie, which is scheduled to go into production at the end of this year in Colorado. An official release date has not yet been set, but the movie is on track to come out sometime in 2015.
