Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ Coming For Christmas

Quentin Tarantino’s new movie The Hateful Eight is seeing a limited release on Christmas Day this year, and not in any regular format — in the now-rare 70mm format, Variety reports. The movie will see a wider release on January 8 of next year. Releasing on Christmas Day seems to be becoming a habit for Tarantino, with Django Unchained also releasing on December 25 back in 2012.

The Hateful Eight is another Western, a favorite style of Tarantino’s, set in a bone-chilling Wyoming winter. Entertainment Weekly reports the movie will star several long-time Tarantino collaborators. The lead cast is made up of Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Bruce Dern, and Kurt Russell.

The Weinstein Company have released a snippet of a synopsis, giving us a look into what viewers can expect to see in The Hateful Eight.

“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 (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason 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 (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton 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 (Demian Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…”

If the idea of people stuck together, with tensions aplenty, sounds slightly like a previous Quentin Tarantino movie, you’re not wrong. Tarantino himself compared the movie to his first, Reservoir Dogs, when he spoke to Entertainment Weekly last month, describing the similarities as a happy accident.

“That wasn’t a marching order when I sat down to write the script, but pretty quickly I realized this is kind of a nice coming-full-circle.”

Quentin Tarantino previously said he would leave film (kind of) after this, his 10th movie (that is, if you don’t count his segment of Four Rooms, and who can blame him for trying to forget that). His decision was met with skepticism from Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell, and I can’t say I blame them. Tarantino’s had a good career, but I can’t see him calling it a day just yet.

The decision to have the movie on a 70mm print is something of an auteur’s move — the format hasn’t been used this widely in two decades. So why use 70mm? Well, its wide and high-resolution, perfect for spectacular scenic shots. In a statement, The Weinstein Company said that the use of the specialist format is a “Christmas gift,” the Wrap reports.

“Our long relationship with Quentin Tarantino is one of the cornerstones of this company, so it’s incredibly special to us to be releasing his latest film in such a spectacular way on 70mm – we can’t think of a finer Christmas gift to be giving movie lovers and Tarantino fans this year.”

Are you looking forward to The Hateful Eight? How do you think it will compare to Quentin Tarantino’s other works?

[Image by Jerod Harris/Getty Images, poster courtesy of IMDb]