page_title: The Hateful Eight
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Hateful Eight / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: The Hateful Eight Live Reading at the United Artists Theater, in the Ace Hotel Los Angeles
context_page_description: The Hateful Eight is a 2015 American revisionist Western mystery film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern as eight strangers who seek refuge from a blizzard in a stagecoach stopover some time after the American Civil War.
  Tarantino announced The Hateful Eight in November 2013. He conceived it as a novel and sequel to his previous film Django Unchained before deciding to make it a standalone film. After the script leaked in January 2014, he canceled the film and instead directed a live reading at the United Artists Theater in Los Angeles, before reconsidering and resuming progress on the project. Filming began on December 8, 2014, near Telluride, Colorado. The original score was Italian composer Ennio Morricone's first and only for a Tarantino film, his first complete Western score in 34 years, and his first for a high-profile Hollywood production since Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars in 2000.
context_section_description: In November 2013, writer-director Quentin Tarantino said he was working on another Western. He initially attempted the story as a novel, a sequel to his film Django Unchained titled Django in White Hell, but realized that the Django character did not fit the story. On January 12, 2014, the title was announced as The Hateful Eight.
  The film was inspired by the 1960s Western TV series Bonanza, The Virginian and The High Chaparral. Tarantino said:
  Twice per season, those shows would have an episode where a bunch of outlaws would take the lead characters hostage. They would come to the Ponderosa and hold everybody hostage, or go to Judge Garth's place—Lee J. Cobb played him—in The Virginian and take hostages. There would be a guest star like David Carradine, Darren McGavin, Claude Akins, Robert Culp, Charles Bronson, or James Coburn. I don't like that storyline in a modern context, but I love it in a Western, where you would pass halfway through the show to find out if they were good or bad guys, and they all had a past that was revealed. I thought, 'What if I did a movie starring nothing but those characters? No heroes, no Michael Landons. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.
  Production would most likely have begun in mid 2014, but after the script leaked online in January 2014, Tarantino considered publishing it as a novel instead. He said he had given the script to a few trusted colleagues, including Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen. This version of the script featured a different ending in which Warren and Mannix attempt to kill Gage in revenge by forcing him to drink the poisoned coffee, sparking a firefight in which every character is killed. Tarantino described his vision for the character of Daisy Domergue as a "Susan Atkins of the Wild West".
  On April 19, 2014, Tarantino directed a live reading of the leaked script at the United Artists Theater in the Ace Hotel Los Angeles. The event was organized by the Film Independent at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as part of the Live Read series and introduced by Elvis Mitchell. Tarantino explained that they would read the first draft of the script, and he added that he was writing two new drafts with a different ending. The actors who joined Tarantino included Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Amber Tamblyn, James Parks, Walton Goggins, Zoë Bell, James Remar, Dana Gourrier, Dern, Roth and Madsen.
caption: The Hateful Eight Live Reading at the Ace Hotel Los Angeles, as part of LACMA's Live Read series, on April 19, 2014
exif: {"Image Make": "LGE", "Image Model": "Nexus 5", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:07:17 11:21:27", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[34, 2, 29657/1000]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[118, 15, 2307/100]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "1", "GPS GPSAltitude": "0", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[6, 52, 34]", "GPS GPSImgDirectionRef": "M", "GPS GPSImgDirection": "169", "GPS GPSProcessingMethod": "[65, 83, 67, 73, 73, 0, 0, 0, 102, 117, 115, 101, 100, 0]", "GPS GPSDate": "2014:04:20", "Image GPSInfo": "664", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1022", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10458", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "12/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:04:19 23:52:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:04:19 23:52:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "216/25", "EXIF ApertureValue": "253/100", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "253/100", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "397/100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2368", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}