With a finalized cast and production kicking off shortly for Quentin Tarantino‘s western The Hateful Eight, the director is already underway with a financially important step: getting as large of an audience as possible to view it. It may not arrive until the tail end of next year, but Tarantino, along with U.S. distributor Harvey Weinstein are parading the film at the American Film Market, attaining plans for release across the world. In doing so, Tarantino has let a few more details slip regarding the film, and his career in general.
First up, during a talk to potential distributors (via Deadline), the director once again semi-confirmed plans to potentially retire after his 10th feature — for those counting, that means we many only three more films from him, including The Hateful Eight. “I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off,” he said. “I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game, and I like the idea of an umbilical cord connection from my first to my last movie. I’m not trying to ridicule anyone who thinks differently, but I want to go out while I’m still hard. … I like that I will leave a 10-film filmography, and so I’ve got two more to go after this. It’s not etched in stone, but that is the plan. If I get to the 10th, do a good job and don’t screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career. If, later on, I come across a good movie, I won’t not do it just because I said I wouldn’t. But 10 and done, leaving them wanting more — that sounds right.”
So, it sounds like things aren’t quite set in stone yet. Moving on to more tangible matters, he discussed the 70mm roll-out plans for his upcoming, mostly one-room western, which is inspired by TV shows like Bonanza, The Virginian, and High Chaparral. “If we do our jobs right by making this film a 70 mm event, we will remind people why this is something you can’t see on television and how this is an experience you can’t have when you watch movies in your apartment, your man cave or your iPhone or iPad,” he said. “You’ll see 24 frames per second play out, all these wonderfully painted pictures create the illusion of movement. I’m hoping it’s going to stop the momentum of the digital stuff, and that people will hopefully go, ‘Man, that is going to the movies, and that is worth saving, and we need to see more of that.”
While Christopher Nolan had an exclusive film-only window for theaters showing Interstellar amounting to a few days, Tarantino plans to take things much further. “Now that film has become endangered, and the theatrical experience is become more and more a throwaway, what we could do was go back to the ’60s style, when there were big roadshow productions of big films like The Sand Pebbles, Mutiny On The Bounty, Battle Of The Bulge, or It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, “he said. “There would be an exclusive engagement in 70mm in a big theater or opera house that would play for a month. It felt like a night at the theater or the symphony. Then they would cut it down and it would show up at the theaters and the drive-ins, near you.”
With cinematographer Robert Richardson back to shoot the film, they plan to solely use 65mm film stock and ultra-Panavision lenses that haven’t been used since some of the aforementioned film. Tarantino says this will provide a 2.78:1 ratio, widest possible ratio, and “the biggest widescreen movie shot in the last 40 years.” His goal is to have the 70mm experience exclusively play for two weeks to a month, then roll out in 35mm and “eventually digital.” It sounds like mighty ambitious plans in the current state of exhibition, but if there’s a filmmaker aside from Nolan that has the clout, Tarantino certainly comes to mind.
What do you think of Tarantino’s roll-out plans?