Why Quentin Tarantino Turned The Hateful Eight Into A Miniseries For Netflix

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Why Quentin Tarantino Turned The Hateful Eight Into A Miniseries For Netflix

It’s been almost three and a half years since Quentin Tarantino’s last movie, The Hateful Eight, was released in theaters. Like a lot of movies nowadays, it’s been available to stream now and then, and can currently be watched on Netflix.

However, it was announced a month ago that an extended version of The Hateful Eight would also be hitting Netflix in April, only rather than it being the Roadshow Cut that had a limited theatrical release, the story is instead told as a four-episode miniseries.

Now Quentin Tarantino has opened up about how The Hateful Eight miniseries came to be, revealing that Netflix approached him about adding extra footage into the original version of the movie so that it could be divided up as episodes. Tarantino thought this would be an “intriguing” creative endeavor and was willing to give it a shot. He recalled:

And so about a year after it’s released, maybe a little less, me and my editor, Fred Raskin, we got together and then we worked real hard. We edited the film down into 50 minute bits, and we very easily got four episodes out of it. We didn’t re-edit the whole thing from scratch, but we did a whole lot of re-editing, and it plays differently. Some sequences are more similar than others compared to the film, but it has a different feeling. It has a different feeling that I actually really like a lot. And there was a literary aspect to the film anyway, so it definitely has this ‘chapters unfolding’ quality.

Quentin Tarantino never felt the need to release The Hateful Eight’s Roadshow Cut because it was its own thing that was specifically intended for 70mm screenings. But with the miniseries, he found a compelling enough reason to revisit his creation and sprinkle in extra footage in a different way.

And speaking of extra footage, Quentin Tarantino also commented on the inaccurate and “frustrating” claim online that there’s no new content in The Hateful Eight miniseries. Continuing in his interview with Slashfilm, he noted that there’s approximately 25 minutes of additional material in the miniseries, and that results in certain sequences playing “very different.”

The director provided an example for how The Hateful Eight miniseries flows differently from the original movie, saying:

Well, the way it’s in the [original] movie is, instead of me saying, ‘But then when John Ruth and Daisy arrived…’, that’s when we cut out of that sequence, and go back….What we’re able to do in this version, is John Ruth and Daisy now enter the place, and you see the entire sequence again. John Ruth and Daisy enter Minnie’s Haberdashery, except now it’s not told from John Ruth and Daisy’s perspective. It’s told from the killers’ perspective…We know what they’ve done, and we know how they set up, and we know Daisy knows who they are…So we see how Tim Roth and how Michael Madsen and how Daisy are reacting to each other, while John Ruth is oblivious.

It’s up to the individual viewer to decide whether The Hateful Eight miniseries is superior or inferior to the movie, but at least Quentin Tarantino enthusiasts now have the opportunity to compare the two versions. And since Tarantino put this miniseries together at Netflix’s request, that almost certainly means the streaming service will be its exclusive home, as opposed to also being made available on Blu-ray.

The Hateful Eight, which took place a little over a decade after the American Civil War and followed eight strangers who were stuck together in a cabin during a blizzard, featured an ensemble cast that included Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Bruce Dern. Although it only made over $155 million worldwide, it collected numerous accolades, including one Oscar win and two nominations.

Quentin Tarantino’s next movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, opens in theaters on July 26. If you’re curious about what other movies are opening later this year, head to our 2019 release schedule.