We've all got to hand it to Harvey Weinstein. The guy plays an Academy voter room like a fiddle and he knows exactly what to say to entice the press as well. The Weinstein Company just showed off roughly 10 minutes of Quentin Tarantino's Western/slave drama "Django Unchained" to press today in Cannes, which we described as, "pure Tarantino through and through. Longtime fans of the director are going to be thrilled."
Right there, that's more enough to whet the appetite of all QT fans who cannot wait until December 25th, when the film finally lands in theaters, but there's more. Hot on the heels of news that revealed that both Kurt Russell and Sacha Baron Cohen had to drop out of their roles in the films for various reasons, Weinstein teased some additional surprises in the film.
Details are vague, but Weinstein told Deadline that "Django Unchained" has another month to go and and may be adding a couple of “surprise co-stars." What that means is anyone's guess. Replacements for Russell's or Cohen's characters? Rumors said that Russell's character had been absorbed into Walton Goggins' similar hick badguy role. Are those reports off? Or are Tarantino and Harvey simply going to be casting some more well-known actors in smaller roles throughout the film, which is essentially what most of the "Django Unchained" casting has been like. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for example, was going to play one of three Australian bandits in the film and that role was pretty small, essentially one scene near the end of the movie (he had to subsequently drop out because of his directorial debut, "Don Juan's Addiction").
We wouldn't put it past Harvey to simply just be stirring the pot and trying to build more buzz (like they need it at this point), but then again almost anyone in Hollywood, bar a few busy A-listers, would likely kill to come on set for just a few days, even if it's a small cameo. Keep an ear to the ground: in the meanwhile, "Django Unchained" hits theaters on Christmas Day.