Over the weekend, Christopher Nolan firmly weighed in on the analog vs. digital debate, and came down on the side of film stock, specifically praising Quentin Tarantino and his plan to first roll out "The Hateful Eight" in 70mm only in select cinemas before opening the movie wide everywhere digitally. Now Tarantino has provided an extra incentive to see his western in his preferred format.
“The roadshow version has an overture and an intermission, and it will be three hours, two minutes,” Tarantino told Variety. “The multiplex version is about six minutes shorter, not counting the intermission time, which is about 12 minutes.”
So what changes are being made? According to the director, it’s in how certain scenes will be edited for television versus the big screen. "I actually changed the cutting slightly for a couple of the multiplex scenes because it’s not that. Now it’s on Showtime Extreme. You’re watching it on TV and you just kind of want to watch a movie on your couch,” the director said of the sequences that in the 70mm version will breathe a little more in “big, long, cool, unblinking takes.”
“It was awesome in the bigness of 70, but sitting on your couch, maybe it’s not so awesome. So I cut it up a little bit. It’s a little less precious about itself,” he added.
Tarantino hopes that a successful opening run in 70mm will pave the way for more filmmakers to utilize the format, and the plan is to show "The Hateful Eight" in all its analog glory in 100 theaters across the country. We’ll see if it’s just film nerds and Tarantino fanboys who flock to this unique experience, or if can be sold as an experience to the mainstream at large.
"The Hateful Eight" starts rolling out on Christmas Day.
