Nothing says “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” quite like watching a group of grizzled folk in a cabin shooting each other, but when it’s a Quentin Tarantino movie, Christmas cheer is a little bit different. The film in question, The Hateful Eight, is now officially a Christmas release with the movie opening up wide on January 8, 2016.
Tarantino is no stranger to the holiday season. His underrated third film Jackie Brown was released on Christmas Day in 1997, and 2012’s Django Unchained, his first out-and-out western, was also released that day. The Weinstein Company are hoping to replicate that film’s success, since it went on to be Tarantino’s highest-grossing film ever with $425 million worldwide and the second-biggest Christmas opening in the U.S. of all time.
What makes this extra exciting to cinephiles is that The Hateful Eight was shot on 70mm film and will be projected that way in most places, if Tarantino has his way. This will make it the widest release of a film shot in the format for almost two decades. Tarantino is a huge proponent of film over digital when shooting the film, and is also a major critic of movie theaters showing movies using Digital Cinema Projection, likening it to watching a Blu-ray at home. The New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles is owned by the director and has had all of its digital projectors removed in favor of film.
The Hateful Eight stars Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Demian Bichir, Walton Goggins, and Bruce Dern and will be about a group of bounty hunters, outlaws, and all-around tough people who are snowed in together following a huge winter storm in Wyoming.
Will you make the yuletide trek to the cinema to see this new film? What’s your take on Tarantino’s love of celluloid over digitalization? Let us know below!
