Quentin Tarantino Discusses The Hateful Eight Script Changes And Alternate Endings (EXCLUSIVE)

By Alex Leadbeater / January 4, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WzVMIqGwgQ The Hateful Eight was making headlines long before cameras had even rolled on Quentin Tarantino's latest - an early draft of the script found its way online a couple of years back, putting the entire project in jeopardy. Thankfully (very thankfully - it's great) that didn't stop QT, with the film hitting UK cinemas this week (and is currently playing in the US). We got to sit down and chat with the director about his new movie, with particular reference to what impact that script leak had on the film's development:

I was experimenting with writing in a different way than I normally do. Normally I write this one big novel kinda situation - I start at the beginning and I end at the end. And in this case I wanted to do three different drafts. Basically just spend time with the material. And then to tell the story three different times and just see what happened from doing that.

The leak obviously got in the way of that new approach to screenwriting (he says "When the first draft got out there, it kinda kicked me in the shins as far as my whole creative process"), although that doesn't mean the finished movie is identical to the leaked script. Several changes were made, including the expansion of a plot point that was originally only in one scene but now underpins the entire story, the Lincoln Letter:

There's a letter written by Abraham Lincoln that appear in the piece. But now in the very first draft it only appears once in the stagecoach when John Ruth reads it and it doesn't go any further from there. Now I always intended to make more of it than that. But I wasn't ready in the first draft. I wanted to just... y'know... I didn't have to do everything in that one because there would be a second draft and a third draft coming out later.

What was most interesting from our discussion, however, was a look into what the other versions of the story might have been like, with specific reference to their bloody finales:

All three endings were different. In the second one it was a different group of people that ended up being there at the very end as opposed to the group that ends up being there now. Though I think now was the way to go as far as the ending.

We also discussed the resurgence of the western genre and some rather odd Pulp Fiction spin-off material. Check out the full interview above and read our five star review here. The Hateful Eight is released in UK cinemas on January 8th.