Quentin Tarantino has often found himself at the center of controversy, and over the last few days he's in the middle of another firestorm. This one involves a proposed boycott of his upcoming Western, The Hateful Eight, due to comments the director made at a rally against police violence. Let's be real: the police unions would have called for a boycott even if he had never opened his mouth, but that he called some of them "murderers" has thrown fuel on the fire. Whatever the case, Tarantino's fight against real violence has put a lot of eyes on his film which promises a ton of fictional violence, and makes the timing of a new trailer nearly perfect.
Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Demian Bichir, Walton Goggins, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, and Bruce Dern, The Hateful Eight takes a number of dangerous, ornery cusses and packs them all into one place while a blizzard rages outside. Will there be blood? Count on it. Here's the synopsis:
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…
The Hateful Eight opens in 70mm on December 25th, followed by a normal rollout two weeks later.
