Quentin Tarantino says he’s shelving his new script, “The Hateful Eight,” because it ‘leaked’ (not literally). Mike Fleming of Deadline.com has been covering this all day after breaking the story that the script existed at all. Tarantino told Fleming he started getting calls from agents about actors for different roles.
Tarantino told Fleming that he’d shown the script to three actors– Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth. Madsen and Roth are Tarantino regulars. Dern is new. There was buzz around town over Golden Globe week that Christoph Waltz was involved, too.
Here’s an ironic moment for you: I ran into Dern and Waltz with their respective agents in a long narrow corridor in the Beverly Hilton on Golden Globe night. They were each coming from The Weinstein Company party. We clogged up the hallway talking about Tarantino’s script. Dern told me he’d be thrilled to be included but knew nothing. Waltz was totally perplexed. He said he really hadn’t heard a word from Tarantino.
This went on for quite a while. Fleming’s boss, Jay Penske, and his beautiful wife actually encountered our whole weird meeting. (It is a narrow hallway.) I never wrote about it because everyone denied any knowledge of “The Hateful Eight.”
Fleming says Tarantino feels betrayed. But he should calm and give it a second thought. Whoever leaked the script, it doesn’t matter. But we always need good new movies. I wish he’d bring back Robert Forster, too.
I hope Mike can talk him back into doing it!
