Angry Tarantino Drops Film After Script Leaks

Quentin Tarantino is mad—really mad. The director called Mike Fleming Jr. of Deadline after his script for The Hateful Eight leaked, and explained that he feels so "depressed" and betrayed that he's scrapping the ensemble Western, at least for now. "I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today," Tarantino says. "It’s got to be either the agents of [Bruce] Dern or [Michael] Madsen. Please name names."

Tarantino suspects CAA, which represents Dern, is responsible for the leak, but Fleming talked to a trusted insider who "vehemently denied" that possibility and even said Tarantino may be partially to blame for distributing the script without a watermark. Even so, Fleming notes, an agent may well be responsible for the leak without even knowing it, perhaps by asking an untrustworthy assistant to make a copy of the script. Tarantino says he's going to publish The Hateful Eight instead, and may make the movie in a few years. For now, he'll direct something else—and apparently he has no problem with Dern, because he says he'll probably write him a big role in whatever his next project is. (More Quentin Tarantino stories.)