Harvey Weinstein may have dodged a bullet when Quentin Tarantino abruptly dropped his “very bloody” Western, “Hateful Eight,” just days after Weinstein vowed to turn his back on violent films and attacked the NRA — a move which has drawn death threats from opponents.
Tarantino, Hollywood’s foremost artiste of on-screen mayhem, ditched his follow-up to the blood-soaked “Django Unchained” this week after angrily accusing one of six people of leaking the script after he’d given it to them to read.
Deadline reported that Tarantino had “just begun talking to [Weinstein] about how they’re going to make [‘Hateful Eight’].” The Wrap got a copy of the leaked script and described it as “a tense, contained and very bloody Western centered on bounty hunters.”
It was fateful for Weinstein, who revealed last week that he’s making an anti-gun movie with Meryl Streep that will make the National Rifle Association “wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.” He later said on CNN, “I have to just choose movies that aren’t violent or as violent as they used to be . . . I can’t make one movie and say, ‘This is what I want for my kids,’ and then go out and just be a hypocrite.”
However, Weinstein did leave the door open for violence by holding up Mark Wahlberg’s Navy SEAL pic “Lone Survivor” as “a tribute to the . . . special forces.” But “I’m not going to make some crazy action movie just to blow up people.”
Weinstein insisted to Page Six of “Hateful Eight,” “Quentin never spoke to me about the movie. He has a process, he gets some of his people to read it first. It was too premature.” He added, “Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are artists and they believe that sometimes by showing ultra-violence that it deters people from doing these things. I respect artists. But I won’t make violent films just to make a buck.”
Weinstein was attacked by the Washington Times for his anti-NRA stance and called a “subhuman punk” by gun-loving rocker Ted Nugent. Meanwhile, we’re told the Weinstein Co. has had to beef up security after multiple death threats.