'Hateful Eight' Cast Confirmed, Plus Official Synopsis

The saga of Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' began with the screenplay leaking online, continued with Tarantino canceling the project and then resurrecting it following a wonderfully received live reading of the script. Now, it climaxes with the official cast and synopsis being revealed. It's been a bumpy road, but there's a new QT film at the end. The journey should be worth the drama and trouble.

Although the screenplay has been revised since the reading, the bulk of the cast from that performance has been retained for the film version. Set in post-Civil War Colorado, Kurt Russell will play John "The Hangman" Ruth, a bounty hunter dragging Jennifer Jason Leigh's Daisy Domergue to her execution. Sidetracked by a blizzard, they take shelter in a haberdashery with a group of strangers who turn out to be a deadly and untrustworthy bunch. That bunch is played by one hell of an ensemble: Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen and Demian Bichir. Channing Tatum has also been announced for the film, but his role remains a mystery and has a small, but pivotal in the third act of the film. After all, he's the ninth name in a movie called 'The Hateful Eight.'

The claustrophobic, one-room set-up makes this sound like Tarantino's most intimate film since 'Reservoir Dogs,' which also focused on an ensemble of clashing personalities committing awful acts against each other in a confined space. The official synopsis below paints a picture of a pretty combustible group, so there's no way everyone is leaving this movie alive. And that's an exciting prospect! Few things are quite as exciting as strong actors murdering each other under Tarantino's darkly comedic and cinematically rich lens. We've seen how good six of those cast members have been good under his direction before, so the prospect of Leigh, Bichir and Tatum getting to tear into some of Tarantino's stylized dialogue sounds like a real treat.

Here's that official synopsis:

In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie's Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

'The Hateful Eight' is going to begin shooting next month for an Oscar and festival-friendly 2015 release date.