Meet the Hateful Eight.
The cast of Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated new film “The Hateful Eight” was announced Wednesday by The Weinstein Company and boasts an all-star cast headed up by Samuel L. Jackson.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir, Walton Goggins, Michael Madsen and Bruce Dern make up the rest of the star-studded octet, the company confirmed in a press release. While not a part of the “eight,” Channing Tatum also has a role in the film.
Along with the cast, the film’s plot was also revealed. Set “six or eight or twelve years” after the Civil War, the movie follows the passengers of a stagecoach traveling across Wyoming during a harsh winter.
Bounty hunter John (The Hangman) Ruth (Russell) is taking the fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh) to the town of Red Rock to bring her to justice. Along the way, the pair meet Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier who is also now a bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a “Southern renegade” claiming to be the new sheriff of Red Rocks.
When a blizzard hits, the foursome take refuge in a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass called Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they encounter the rest of the titular “hateful eight”: Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s in the owner’s absence; Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock; “cow-puncher” Joe Gage (Madsen) and Confederate Gen. 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,” the statement teases.
While most of “The Hateful Eight” cast has collaborated with Tarantino before, the film marks the first time Leigh, Bichir and Tatum have appeared in one of his films.
“The Hateful Eight” has a famously rocky history. When the film’s script leaked online earlier this year, the Oscar winner elected to drop the project, telling Deadline that he was “depressed” and had “no desire” to make the film. The director also filed a lawsuit against Gawker for leaking the script, though a judge dismissed the suit.
But perhaps buoyed by a successful live script reading in April, Tarantino announced in July at San Diego Comic-Con that he would be making the movie after all.
“The Hateful Eight” will shoot in Telluride, Colo., and is set for a 2015 release. It will also have the widest 70-mm. film release in more than 20 years.
