Quentin Tarantino Announces Retirement Plans After ‘Hateful Eight’

There are two things on the mind of wizard-director Quentin Tarantino these days and those are “The Hateful Eight” and the desire to save the format of film. For the man behind recent hit films “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” and the newly remodeled film-bastion the New Beverly Cinema, these two components go hand in hand. The director spoke to Deadline in an article posted yesterday Nov. 10, not only about his plan to reignite public excitement in the format of film through his forthcoming picture “The Hateful Eight,” but also about his not-so-distant retirement.

“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,” Tarantino told Deadline. “… 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.’”

It was only days ago that Tarantino announced the complete cast for “The Hateful Eight,” an epic post-Civil War Western about a group of individuals, including confederate soldiers, fugitives and bounty hunters, holed up in an establishment in the midst of a deadly blizzard. Tarantino refers to the characters as “a bunch of nefarious guys” and says the intention is to “Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.” The cast includes to “The Hateful Eight” includes Channing Tatum, Demian Bichir, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Zoë Bell, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen.

“The Hateful Eight” will be Tarantino’s 9th motion picture, which according to his retirement plans, only allows him one more (or two if you count the “Kill Bill” movies as one film) before he quits to pursue writing plays and books. “I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off, I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more,” he explained. “… I like that I will leave a 10-film filmography, and so I’ve got two more to go after this.” He did leave in the caveat that if, after 10, he encounters a project he’s passionate about, he may return to the art of filmmaking.

As for his thoughts on digital as opposed to film? “Digital presentation is just television in public, we’re all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen, said Tarantino. “I have worked 20 years, too long to accept the diminishing results of having it come into theaters with the quality of a f*cking DVD, shot with the same shit they shoot soap operas with. It’s just not good enough for me.”

“The Hateful Eight” is set to begin filming in Telluride in early 2015.