Trivia / The Hateful Eight

• Actor-Shared Background: Six-Horse Judy is from Auckland, New Zealand, just like the actress who plays her (Zoë Bell).
• California Doubling: While set in Wyoming, the movie was filmed in its entirety in southwest Colorado on a ranch near Telluride.
• The Cast Showoff: Both Demián Bichir and Jennifer Jason Leigh actually performed the music their characters play at various points ("Silent Night" on piano and "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" on guitar, respectively).
• Content Leak:
  • The original draft of the script was leaked in 2014. This caused production to be delayed, as Quentin Tarantino initially cancelled the project because of the leak, but then decided to make it using new drafts which featured a different ending.
  • Screeners were leaked a few days before the theatrical run of the film began.
• Creator Backlash: Despite his winning an Academy Award for his efforts, Ennio Morricone disliked the fact that Quentin Tarantino insisted on having him compose the movie's score in two weeks, and the subsequent rush to have it delivered to the director on time made it an unpleasant experience for him. It doesn't help that Morricone wasn't a fan of Tarantino's works because he borrows techniques from other films.
• Descended Creator: Besides directing and writing The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino plays the off-screen narrator.
• Divorced Installment: The film was originally intended to be a direct sequel to Django Unchained titled Django in White Hell with Jamie Foxx reprising his role as the title character. The idea was scrapped when Quentin Tarantino realized he wanted the audience to be more in the dark about everyone's motives and having trouble guessing who, if anyone, was a good guy, and they wouldn't be second-guessing a character they were already familiar with (nor would they be that worried about him dying if his name was in the title of the movie). It's likely that Django's role in the movie was replaced by and developed into Marquis Warren, another surly black bounty hunter.
• Enforced Method Acting: The guitar, a priceless antique on loan from C. F. Martin & Company's guitar museum, was supposed to be swapped out with a fake to get smashed. But somehow Kurt Russell was never told this, and reached out during the same take and destroyed the real one. Jennifer Jason Leigh's horrified reaction is quite real and you can even see her looking to the film crew as she shouts "Woah, woah, woah!"
• Playing Against Type:
  • Zoë Bell plays a completely-harmless, if physically gifted character who gets casually killed off without fighting back.
  • Channing Tatum as a Sociopathic Knight of Cerebus.
  • Walton Goggins usually plays more serious antagonists. Sheriff Mannix is a much more comedic role than his normal fare.
• Production Posse: This movie is a who's who of QT's all-stars; Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoë Bell, and James Parks all return from prior films. Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, and Walton Goggins (the latter already a member of Robert Rodriguez's neighboring posse) make their sophomore appearances.
• Throw It In!: A particularly bleak example, as befitting a Quentin Tarantino movie. Watch closely during the guitar scene: the moment that John Ruth grabs the guitar from Daisy and smashes it, Jennifer Jason Leigh breaks character and starts going, "What? Hey! Whoa! Whoa!" because the guitar that Kurt Russell smashed wasn't a prop, but a museum piece from C.F. Martin & Company. He had not been told by Tarantino to wait until a prop guitar was substituted in before he smashed it. Tarantino left it in, which understandably upset the museum. You can also note the spontaneity in Leigh reaction: when the guitar is smashed, she turns to the crew, facing away from the door, in surprise. The very next shot has her facing John and the door.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In what would have been a Playing Against Type for the ages, the part of Daisy was initially written for Jennifer Lawrence. She declined due to scheduling conflicts with both parts of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Geena Davis, Demi Moore, Hilary Swank, Michelle Williams, Evan Rachel Wood, and Robin Wright were also considered. Katee Sackhoff auditioned, but Tarantino eventually decided that he wanted an older actor.
  • More of an idea that was tossed around and ultimately vetoed — Walton Goggins stated that, at one point, the actors and Quentin discussed a post-credits scene in which someone comes across the Haberdashery a week later, finding the corpses of everyone within. Goggins' suggestion for the actor in question was Bill Murray.
  • Viggo Mortensen was in talks for Jody Domergue, but had to decline due to scheduling conflicts. Josh Brolin was rumored to have been up for a major role, but nothing came of it.
  • Christoph Waltz was offered an unspecified part. He didn't feel like he fit a group of Tarantino regulars, so he turned it down.
  • In the original screenplay, there was an emphasis on the presence of rats in the haberdashery's basement. Throughout the screenplay, the sound of rats fighting each other occurs several times and is often a topic of conversation. Also, Jody Domergue is not immediately shot dead after he comes out of the basement. In the screenplay, he is shot but not killed, and the rats eventually eat him alive. The rats were completely discarded and are not in either of the versions of the movie.
  • In one of the earlier drafts of the script, the character of Oswaldo Mobray was written to appear entirely innocent until towards the climax. During the first major shootout between Jody and Mannix, an unarmed Oswaldo is shot in the chest by a panicking, trigger-happy Mannix, thus making the audience first speculate that he is merely an innocent bystander with no connections to Daisy.
  • According to the earliest draft of the script, the scene where Major Warren interrogates Bob, Oswaldo, and Joe Gage about working with Daisy and poisoning the coffee was originally supposed to be a bit more brutal and disturbing than what was shown on film. Instead of simply threatening to pour the rest of the poisoned coffee down Daisy's throat, Warren was written to violently beat her, hold her at gunpoint, and then prepare to shoot her in the head until Joe Gage finally intervenes. There was also more dialogue in this version of the scene.
  • In the earlier drafts of the script, Charly was written to be a young orphan boy whose parents were supposedly slaves and were possibly murdered, thus making his demise at the hands of the ruthless Domergue gang much more depressing and tragic. His death scene was also originally supposed to be more brutal and violent.
  • In earlier drafts of the script, the death of Gen. Sanford Smithers was more graphic and brutal than what made it to film. Not only does Maj. Warren shoot the general, but the force of the bullet entering sends the old man into the fireplace, where he burns to death. The only reason Warren lets the others pull his body out of the fire is to keep the whole haberdashery from catching fire.
  • In the original script, Bob was French rather than Mexican.
• Word of Saint Paul: Kurt Russell stated in an interview with Russ Fisher on Nerdist (published December 15, 2015): "Where, if, instead of getting to the point we see in the film, if she had gone to court and been hanged, then you see John Ruth watching her hang, he’s got to head on to the next one, and he just wanders down the street, his left arm, where she’d been chained, he doesn’t know what to do with it, he’s kind of lost." Whether he means Ruth is mourning the death of a Worthy Opponent or feeling some kind of guilt is unknown.

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