Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight: 10 Things You Need To Know

5. You Can Watch Its Inspirations Right Now

Tarantino is known for paying homage to/ripping off (depending on your point of view) old movies, and the premise of The Hateful Eight is clearly paying homage to/ripping off Howard Hawks's iconic Western Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne as a Sheriff who has to barricade himself in a saloon and fight off hordes of attackers €“ as well as the prisoner they're trying to rescue. On the basis of these early reports of The Hateful Eight, he's got a few more inspirations swirling around in there too. The film is being shot in an aspect ratio of 2.78:1, an ultra widescreen ratio that was only used on a handful of movies during the fifties and sixties. Those movies? Screwball ensemble comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; early blockbuster war film Battle Of The Bulge; and, probably most tellingly, How The West Was Won, one of MGM's last huge epic productions. So maybe the scope of The Hateful Eight is bigger than that one room...