Channeling the spirit of Hollywood’s Golden Age, The Weinstein Company will venture down the road less travelled later this year with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
Taking full advantage of the 70mm format, the bounty hunter drama will see an initial release on Christmas Day before expanding to normal theaters in the new year. In order to get moviegoers up to speed, today heralds the release of a new featurette for The Hateful Eight, starring the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Tarantino himself as they each outline the film’s grand ambitions.
In essence, it’s a short and sweet history lesson about the legacy of the 70mm format which, as Russell candidly reveals, took some time getting used to as an actor. Shot using 65mm cameras and later projected in 70, it’s an approach that allows for a cinematic experience almost twice the size of your regular old theatre screen. Quite the feat, of course, and considering some of the glorious panning shots glimpsed in The Hateful Eight‘s latest trailer, we can only imagine how great the icy hills of Wyoming will look up on the big, big screen.
The Hateful Eight will comprise Russell, Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Demian Bichir when it opens via 70mm-fitted theaters on Christmas Day. For those of you who can’t make the special screenings, fear not: Tarantino’s eight feature film will make its theatrical bow on January 8.
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…