We’ve already heard about Quentin Tarantino‘s idea to turn "Django Unchained" into a TV miniseries, and with "The Hateful Eight" on the horizon, he’s once again thinking about new ways to tell his vengeance story.
READ MORE: Ranked: Quentin Tarantino’s 50 Best Characters
In a roundtable talk with The Hollywood Reporter, the director reveals he’d be interested in taking his movie to the boards. "I want to write novels, and I want to write and direct theater. I’ve got to see how I feel when ‘Hateful Eight’ is over, if I still have the same juice for it, but the next thing I’d like to do is a theatrical adaptation of ‘Hateful Eight,’ because I like the idea of other actors having a chance to play my characters," he said. "So that’s where I’m at. I’m working my way into that time period, where I write novels and film pieces and film books, but in particular direct theater."
What Tarantino doesn’t say in the THR piece — other than he rarely fulfills any of these kinds of excited aspirations and goes on to something original instead — is that on the stage, he would make “The Hateful Eight” a far more linear production.
“If I were to do this on the stage— and I’m very much considering it, I have to go around the world with it and see how I feel about the piece after everything is said and done. But if I did do that, I would have to rewrite it, especially as far as the structure is concerned," he said in a recent DP/30 interview. "Because the [chapter] where everything is revealed is chapter five. And in a play version I would start with chapter five. I would get rid of the mystery all together and it would never leave Minnie’s haberdashery, it would start with chapter five and you would see the set-up for everything. And then you would watch the characters arrive at Minnie’s two by two.”
A bold and interesting choice. Meanwhile, Tarantino also revealed a fascinating element about “The Hateful Eight” creation— it’s impetus was from a sorta sequel to "Django Unchained."
"After doing Django I knew I didn’t want to do any Django movie sequels or anything, but I liked the idea of there being several paperbacks that could be the further adventures of Django or maybe go back in time, a couple more Django/Schultz adventures,” he told DP/30. The director said he brought it up to several publishers, they gave him several options for story ideas, but ultimately he decided he couldn’t just give up his baby to other authors or even ideas. So Tarantino, decided to write a Django novel.
“So I hadn’t written a novel before and I thought I would just try my hand at writing a Django paperback,” he explained. “At the time it was called ‘Django In White Hell’ [‘White Hell’ being part of a chapter in ‘The Hateful Eight’]. The filmmaker explained he started writing and Django was part of the stagecoach chapters that begin what would eventually become the “The Hateful Eight” screenplay. “Instead of [Samuel L. Jackson’s] Major Warren [character] it was Django,” he revealed.
But after much consideration, Tarantino realized his old character was working against the idea. “Because I was introducing such rough characters in this piece, and there would be even more disreputable characters waiting for them [at the haberdashery], at a certain point I realized. ‘well you know what’s wrong with this piece? It’s Django. he’s needs to go. Because you shouldn’t have a moral center when it comes to these eight characters.’ ”
It’s definitely an interesting insight into his own movies, and you can watch the full interview below. Meanwhile, while recent rumors suggested that the number of cinemas participating in the 70mm roadshow of "The Hateful Eight" might be rolled back, those were squashed this morning. However, JoBlo reports that select cinemas will also have the roadshow version of the movie (that’s a few minutes longer, and contains an overture and intermission) available digitally. Even more, the multiplex release has been moved up to January 1st. (Update: this news has been confirmed by official sources).
According to JoBlo, the move comes as theaters are apparently balking at the hefty cost of converting their cinemas to 70mm for the film. But I’d also wager The Weinstein Company were concerned about maintaining buzz for two weeks during the holidays for a film that, initially at least, was only going to be in select markets. This will certainly allow them to court a bigger audience, much more quickly. — additional reporting by Rodrigo Perez