After stops and starts and leaks and reversals, Quentin Tarantino’s 70mm Western ‘The Hateful Eight’ is now, finally, officially, definitively, happening. The Weinstein Company announced today that production has begun in Telluride, Colorado.

The announcement also included a list of actors added to a cast that already included Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Channing Tatum. Damn, that is one crowded stagecoach. The new additions to the ‘Hateful Eight’ (or sixteen, now, I guess):

An exciting roster of supporting talent been added to the cast, most of whom have worked with the filmmaker in the past. James Parks (‘Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2’), Dana Gourrier (‘Django Unchained’), Zoë Bell (‘Death Proof’), Gene Jones (‘No Country For Old Men’), Keith Jefferson (‘Django Unchained’), Lee Horsley (‘Django Unchained’), Craig Stark (‘Django Unchained’) and Belinda Owino (‘Django Unchained’) have all come on board.

Obviously the most appealing name there is Zoë Bell, the great stuntwoman turned star who doubled for Uma Thurman in ‘Kill Bill’ and then rode on the trunk of a Dodge Challenger through a spectacular chase in ‘Death Proof.’ Hopefully she gets the chance to show off some of her great physical skills in ‘The Hateful Eight’; how about riding on top of a stagecoach?

The Weinstein Company announcement also included a more detailed plot synopsis for the film:

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 ...

Michael Madsen plays a “cow-puncher”? In the words of Jackson’s Jules from ‘Pulp Fiction,’ “that’s all you had to say.” It’s going to be a very tight schedule, but ‘The Hateful Eight’ is currently scheduled to open in late 2015.

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