**Spoilers ahead** You already know the story, but here’s the short version: at the beginning of 2014, Quentin Tarantino announced he was shelving "The Hateful Eight," after the script leaked before he had even gotten the movie in front of cameras. Later that spring, Tarantino staged a live read of the leaked script (read our review), but announced he was in the process of rewriting it, and at end of the year he was back to making "The Hateful Eight," now with a new ending that was kept under lock and key. So, what changed? Essentially, the final act.
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Collider has gone fairly in depth about what changes in the latter stages of the film. If you’re reading this, you likely already know the central mystery of the movie is who among those gathered in Minnie’s Haberdashery is secretly working with wanted outlaw Daisy Domergue. It doesn’t take long for tensions to boil over, blood to start flying, and theories and accusations being made about who is really in league with Daisy. And in the final chapter of the film — where Tarantino made his changes to the script — is where it all goes down.
Originally, it was only Chris Mannix who winds up surviving the carnage, with Marquis Warren dying from a gunshot fired by Daisy. Moreover, Marquis Warren’s captivating (and totally fake) Lincoln letter never gets read aloud, though it does get revealed as being a fake.
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Meanwhile, Daisy’s brother Jody — hiding in the basement —managed to get more down before dying, wounding Mannix and injuring Warren more substantially.
But perhaps the biggest change is thematic. The original version doesn’t seem to really allow for underlying social and racial political themes to really play out, the way they do with Mannix and Warren working together through much of the third act. Tarantino’s changes are arguably for the better, rather than your standard carnage followed by one-man-left-standing setup.
Thoughts? Did you read the leaked script and then see the movie? What did you think? Let us know in the comments section.