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It was almost destined never to see the light of day after writer-director Quentin Tarantino's fury over a leaked script last year, but the first images of his western epic Hateful Eight have appeared.
The pictures, featuring Tarantino regular players Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth and also Jennifer Jason Leigh, feature the actors as bounty hunters sheltering from a blizzard in Wyoming in the post-civil war years. The new shots appear as the cover story in US magazine Entertainment Weekly, with the film scheduled for release in the northern hemisphere autumn.
The characters feature the evocative, somewhat menacing nicknames with Russell as the Hangman, Jackson as the Bounty Hunter, Leigh as the Prisoner, Roth as the Little Man and Dern as the Confederate.
It also stars Michael Madsen, Channing Tatum and James Parks.
The background to the production is almost as epic as the film, however. In January last year, a leaked version of the script appeared on news blog Gawker after a copies had been passed out to a small group of actors for reading.
Tarantino reacted at the time by abruptly pulling the plug on the project altogether. "I'm very, very depressed," he told Deadline.com at the time. "I give it out to six people and if I can't trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it."
At the time he pinpointed the agents of Michael Madsen or Bruce Dern as the alleged sources of the leak.
He also launched a copyright lawsuit against Gawker, claiming the media outlet had "made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck." He later dropped the lawsuit.
Hateful Eight, produced by the Weinstein Company, eventually kicked off filming in January in Colorado.
Tarantino has said the movie is inspired by cult TV shows Bonanza, The Virginian and The High Chaparral and storylines where a group were taken hostage and it was never clear who exactly were the good or bad guys. "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."
It's the first feature since 2012's Django Unchained, which grossed $US425 million worldwide, and saw Tarantino take the Golden Globe for best screenplay and Christoph Waltz seize the Oscar for best supporting actor.
Quentin Tarantino's #HatefulEight: See our exclusive character portraits http://t.co/CYCHsIQluS pic.twitter.com/hzcJm7Bfd8— Entertainment Weekly (@EW)
May 10, 2015
Your first look at Quentin Tarantino’s #HatefulEight, the grittiest, deadliest movie of 2015: http://t.co/d0G4895onK pic.twitter.com/dH1fifVjmC— Entertainment Weekly (@EW)
May 7, 2015
