Award-winning director Quentin Tarantino learned Tuesday that someone in his small circle of actors chosen for “The Hateful Eight” has leaked his script, and he is bitterly shelving the movie until the not-so-near future.
Mr. Tarantino told Deadline.com that he will possibly revisit the movie in the next five years.
“I’m very, very depressed,” he said. “I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today.”
“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,” he told Deadline. “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.”
Mr. Tarantino told the website that he believes the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which reps Mr. Dern, is responsible for the leak. The CAA, however, denied the allegations and said it’s possible the director leaked the script himself, whether intentionally, without a watermark.
“I’m going to publish ’The Hateful Eight,’ and that’s it for now,” Mr. Tarantino told Deadline. “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.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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