Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti Western: What We Know So Far

Details are beginning to fall in place for director's 'Inglourious Basterds' follow-up.
By Eric Ditzian

Quentin Tarantino
Photo: Charles Eshelman/ FilmMagic

For years, Quentin Tarantino has been talking about the kooky idea of making a spaghetti western-esque film that explores American slavery. Now multiple reports suggest he might be moving forward with a project in a similar vein.

Nothing's confirmed yet, of course, but all this chatter does seem to indicate that Tarantino's next production following the Oscar-winning, $300 million-grossing success of 2009's "Inglourious Basterds" will, in fact, be a spaghetti western. There have been, until now, numerous projects the filmmaker was said to be considering, though he has long stated a desire to explore the western genre.

"I've been wanting to do that for a long time," Tarantino told us late in '09 of the slavery pic. "That's definitely in the garden, for lack of a better metaphor. That is definitely one of my roses."

So what do we know so far? Back in 2007, Tarantino spoke at length to Britain's Telegraph about that project, calling it the Southern equivalent of a western. "I want to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies," he said. "I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to."

Tarantino, instead, chose to explore an alt-history take on World War II with "Basterds." When MTV News caught up with him late last year, he confessed that he still hadn't committed to his next project, though he did say that rumors of taking on an adaptation of "The Shadow" were untrue. Only in recent days has talk of a spaghetti western, devoid of a connection to slavery, picked up steam.

Deadline reported that Tarantino said he has completed the script for the new movie and that the writing, unlike his work on "Basterds" and "Kill Bill," came together quite quickly. Meanwhile, the actor Franco Nero gave an Italian-language interview at the Los Angeles Italia festival in which he said that talent has already been coalescing around the project, including himself, Keith Carradine and Treat Williams.

"It's a movie that contains humor, lots of action, but also a great plot," Nero said.

Ain't It Cool News picked up on the news and added some intriguing details — most intriguingly that Christoph Waltz, who won an Oscar for his turn as a cold-blooded Nazi in "Basterds," would also star in the flick. According to AICN, the script is not based on any existing material but is an original script and will potentially begin production in Spain and Italy later this year.

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