Quentin Tarantino Cancelled His Own Movie — Then Brought It Back

The Big Picture

• The Hateful Eight was canceled after an early script leak, but Quentin Tarantino revived it after a successful live reading.
• The Hateful Eight is often considered one of Tarantino’s weaker films, but it still delivers his signature dialogue, worldbuilding, and violence.
• Tarantino’s experience with The Hateful Eight has made him more cautious about early script leaks, keeping Once Upon a Time in Hollywood under wraps.

There is nothing worse than when a new, exciting-sounding movie is announced, only to be canceled or fade from existence. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time. Spider-Man 4 devastated fans in the late 2000s, Stanley Kubrick‘s Napoleon biopic never happened, and Kill Bill Vol. 3 has seemingly drifted into development hell. It’s an absolute shame! Thankfully, there are instances in which movies die and come back. 28 Years Later sounds like it’s finally heading to the silver screen, Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu remake has risen from the dead, and of course, there’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Just because a movie has been canceled, doesn’t mean you have to give up hope forever. If that were the case, then we never would have gotten The Hateful Eight.

But wait, The Hateful Eight came out in December 2015, didn’t it? Yes, it did! However, there was a brief period in which writer, director, and general mastermind Quentin Tarantino left this project in the dust, just before it was to begin filming. This came about after an early draft of the script leaked online, discouraging the filmmaker and killing all enthusiasm that he had for it. Fast forward a bit, and Tarantino rounded up some of the film’s prospective cast for a live reading. This event was so well-received that he ended up pursuing it again, bringing it back from the dead and ultimately turning out his eighth film. The project actually ended up going so far that Tarantino turned the extended cut of his film into a four-episode miniseries on Netflix. None of this would have happened if the brainchild behind Pulp Fiction had given up in the wake of that initial leak!

‘The Hateful Eight’ Is an Underrated Gem in Tarantino’s Stacked Filmography

Quentin Tarantino has one of the most widely celebrated filmographies, not only of his generation, but of all time. This makes it tough being a huge fan of The Hateful Eight. It’s always being cast off to the bottom of everyone’s Tarantino ranking. That being said, he has so many incredible movies, that even his weakest movies tend to be pretty fantastic. Still, there are people out there that find The Hateful Eight to be a bit boring. It’s the filmmaker’s most dialogue-driven picture yet (and that’s saying something), takes place almost entirely in one location, and is a much less eventful Western than his previous film, Django Unchained.

If you’re new to The Hateful Eight but are entering the world of Tarantino, then all you need to know is that this is essentially his Clue, just with a Western coat of paint. The story follows eight total strangers who take shelter from a snowstorm in a stagecoach stopover, some time after the American Civil War. It has an enormous cast, made up of Tarantino regulars like Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, and of course, Samuel L. Jackson, while also introducing newcomers like Jennifer Jason Leigh and Walton Goggins. In just under three hours, this picture serves up all the snappy dialogue, incredible attention to worldbuilding, and violence that you’d expect from this filmmaker.

Quentin Tarantino Canceled ‘The Hateful Eight’ After an Early Draft of the Script Leaked Online

Before The Hateful Eight ever went into production, something terrible happened. Sometime after Tarantino finished writing his first draft of the script, the entire thing was leaked online. This was a devastating blow for him, and he had an idea of who might have done it. In a 2014 interview with Deadline, Tarantino said,

“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.”

He laid out his plans for the film by saying, “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 10 more where that came from.”

Madsen, who was set to play a part in the film, felt that people believed he was the one who leaked it. In a 2015 Entertainment Weekly interview, Madsen went on to say, “I go, ‘Quentin, man, you got to go do something in public because everyone thinks I did it.” To this day, it still isn’t public knowledge who exactly posted this early draft online. Madsen recalls asking, “So are we going to do it or not?”, only for Tarantino to reply, “I don’t know.”

Tarantino Revived ‘The Hateful Eight’ After a Successful Live Reading of the Script

The Hateful Eight didn’t end up spending that long on the shelf. Soon after announcing that it would never be made into a film, Tarantino also announced that there would be a live script reading. Not only that, but select cast members would be joining him. Jackson and Russell were some of the few to read the parts of their respective characters, meanwhile Amber Tamblyn played the part of Daisy Domergue (eventually played by Leigh). The event was such a success that Tarantino ended up reviving the project, and of course, it was released in December 2015 to critical acclaim and box office success. While most of the final product is in line with the structure of the leaked draft and live-read script, there were still some changes made. Aside from the dialogue being polished up and slight tweaks in some scenes being made, the final film had a completely different ending.

It seems as though Tarantino just couldn’t leave The Hateful Eight alone. In 2019, he released the Extended Version through Netflix. While this is a longer version of the movie, it isn’t presented in a traditional sense. The Extended Version is a miniseries, with the movie being broken up into four episodes. While the combined runtime clocks in at exactly three and a half hours, the story itself isn’t all that different. This is largely because each episode has an opening credits sequence, which really is just pulled from the film’s beginning titles, as well as a recap at the top of every episode. This tacks on about eight minutes to each episode’s runtime. Ultimately, the combined narrative length of the extended version is 178 minutes, as opposed to the 160-minute theatrical cut (without credits). The theatrical film is broken up into six chapters, whereas the extended version only has four, each of which kick off their respective episodes. The additional footage doesn’t really change anything either. These changes are mostly seen in extended dialogue passages, which end up deepening the characters and throwing the audience a few extra fun moments.

Tarantino’s experience with The Hateful Eight has forever changed the way that he approaches people with early drafts. In the early stages of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino kept the script locked away in a vault to prevent spoiler leaks, only pulling it out on special occasions. So far, this method has worked out in his favor. Let’s hope that for his tenth and final film, The Movie Critic, everyone respects his process, keeps the script offline, and allows him the space to truly nail this last project.

The Hateful Eight: Extended Version is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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