Quentin Tarantino announced last week that the script for his upcoming western, “The Hateful Eight”, was leaked after he gave it to three actors and their agents and said he wouldn’t be following through with the film because of it. Now, he’s reportedly suing Gawker Media after their site Defamer linked to the full script with the title “Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script.” That “Here” is very important.
“Their headline boasts… ‘Here,’ not someplace else, but ‘Here’ on the Gawker website,” reads the lawsuit. “The article then contains multiple direct links for downloading the entire Screenplay through a conveniently anonymous URL by simply clicking button-links on the Gawker page, and brazenly encourages Gawker visitors to read the Screenplay illegally with the invitation to ‘Enjoy!’ it.”
The lawsuit states that Gawker crossed a line by publishing links to the script rather than merely reporting on the leak.
“Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck,” the complaint says. “This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally.”
Tarantino was very upset about the leak because he’d been excited to work on a new western since finishing up “Django Unchained”; he also viewed the act as a betrayal and said he wasn’t sure which of the six people he gave access to it was responsible for showing it around Hollywood.
“I gave it to one of the producers on Django Unchained, Reggie Hudlin, and he let an agent come to his house and read it,” Tarantino said. “That’s a betrayal, but not crippling because the agent didn’t end up with the script. There is an ugly maliciousness to the rest of it. I gave it to three actors: Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth. The one I know didn’t do this is Tim Roth. One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood. I don’t know how these fucking agents work, but I’m not making this next. I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now. I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”
Image via Wikimedia Commons