Harvey Weinstein Stands Behind Quentin Tarantino's Decision To Halt 'The Hateful Eight,' Sue Gawker

Quentin Tarantino,

Whether or not he’s actually rewriting it, the controversy surrounding the script leak for “The Hateful Eight”—aka script-leak-gate—rages on and one of Quentin Tarantino’s oldest and staunchest champions has thrown in his two cents on how everything shook out. Meanwhile, the “Django Unchained” director’s lawsuit against Gawker looks to have gotten a bit trickier.

In an interview with Deadline, the ever-boisterous Harvey Weinstein stood firmly in the pro-Tarantino camp when it came to shelving the Western and filing suit against Gawker for linking to a site that had his leaked script. He sees it as all part of the same fight. “I’m behind his decision to protect his rights, no matter how he chooses to do it. I think he’s setting an important example about the importance of intellectual property. You wouldn’t go into a clothing store and steal six shirts. He is standing out on a limb for what is right, and backing it up with legal action. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of Quentin,” Weinstein said. “I have to put the integrity of the situation beyond the movie at this point in my career, too. That will be wholly Quentin’s decision, whether he makes that movie or not. He’s got other movies he’s thinking about and now, he’s got a good old fashioned fight on his hands that he’s going to win. And everywhere he goes, he gets tremendous respect for taking a stand, to go with the acclaim he already had as a filmmaker.”

Regardless of the importance of intellectual property, Gawker would very much like to end Tarantino’s suit as quickly as possible and to that end, per THR, the site has filed a motion to dismiss. According to Gawker lawyers, the California courts have no “personal jurisdiction” over the site due to it being “a Cayman Islands corporation which is not subject to general jurisdiction because it does not have any continuous and systematic contacts with specific jurisdiction because it does not publish the website at issue.” What does all that mean? Since Gawker’s parent company is technically a Cayman Islands company and Tarantino’s lawyers are holding the Cayman Islands-set company responsible but suing them in a California court, the jurisdiction would have to be squared away first.

In the meantime, mourn for what could have been while you check out our look at “The Hateful Eight” and argue the vagaries of judicial jurisdiction below.