Easily my most anticipated film of 2015 is Quentin Tarantino‘s latest The Hateful Eight. I may or may not have read that leaked first draft of the script, and if I did, I would say it was pretty terrific. It also does not hurt that Tarantino pushed for 70mm both in production and distribution. And we have been twiddling our thumbs, waiting to know when exactly we’d get to see this film.
Well, we can now go over to our calendars and circle a day. Like his 2012 western Django Unchained, we will see The Hateful Eight on Christmas Day, Dec. 25. That is if your local cinema projects 70mm film. Luckily, I am one of those people. If you do not have this kind of projection around you, you will have to wait until Jan. 8, 2016 for the nationwide digital release.
That is a surprising length of time between the two releases. Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar took a similar release approach last year, but the wait was only two days for the digital folks. I hope that length of time will cause more people to seek out the 70mm screenings to see it, if they cannot wait. I know I couldn’t.
In The Hateful Eight, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, Walt Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demián Bichir, Channing Tatum, Tim Roth, James Parks and Zoe Bell
Original report from The Hollywood Reporter.
