The Weinstein Company announced today that principal photography has begun in Telluride, Colorado on Academy Award winning writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming feature The Hateful Eight. TWC plans to release The Hateful Eight theatrically in 2015.
More supporting cast members have also been announced, most of whom have worked with the filmmaker in the past. James Parks (Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2), Dana Gourrier (Django Unchained), Zoë Bell (Death Proof), Gene Jones (No Country for Old Men), Keith Jefferson (Django Unchained), Lee Horsley (Django Unchained), Craig Stark (Django Unchained) and Belinda Owino (Django Unchained) have all come on board.
The lead cast for the film will include: Samuel L. Jackson (Django Unchained), Kurt Russell (Escape From New York), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle), Walton Goggins (“Justified”), Demian Bichir (A Better Life), Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Bruce Dern (Nebraska) and Channing Tatum (Foxcatcher). Written and directed by Tarantino, The Hateful Eight is produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Stacey Sher and Shannon McIntosh. Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein and Georgia Kacandes are executive producing, and Coco Francini and William Paul Clark are associate producing.
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…
Presented in glorious 70mm, The Hateful Eight marks a continuation of the long-standing relationship between the celebrated filmmaker and the Weinsteins, who have collaborated on all of Tarantino’s films from Reservoir Dogs through Django Unchained.
