The last we heard about Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated Western The Hateful Eight was that it would be shooting in November.  This was a welcome turn of events in a development saga that had turned somewhat sordid.  First, an early draft of the script leaked causing Tarantino to can the film and instead stage a live read.  So getting a new QT movie at all was a blessing.  Now comes the delay.  But the good news is that it’s apparently a minor one.

Kurt Russell is claiming that the film will actually be shooting next year.  Which, by the way, appears to lend some credibility to the idea that the cast of the live read of Hateful Eight would be returning for the film version.  That cast included Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Walton Goggins, Zoe Bell and Tim Roth.  Honestly, don’t expect all of them to come back.  Wanting to do a project and making time for it are two completely different things and aligning those 11 schedules could be tough.  Hit the jump for more on The Hateful Eight delay.

Russell told MyFoxPhilly (via First Showing), “I've got a Tarantino project called The Hateful Eight that looks like it may go somewhere around the beginning of the year."  So no big loss, really.  And, given the fact that Tarantino films tend to come out at the end of the year anyway, we might not even be seeing a delay of any kind when it comes to the release.  To me, this only makes the project even more real.

The story of The Hateful Eight takes place in post-Civil War Wyoming and tells the story of a small group of stagecoach passengers who are stranded during a blizzard.  A large chunk of the film takes place in a bar, and the characters include a couple of bounty hunters (Jackson and Russell), a Confederate general (Dern), a cowboy (Madsen), a transplanted Englishman (Roth), a soldier (Goggins), and a female prisoner (Tamblyn).