Like him or loathe him, Quentin Tarantino is always a man with a vision. You’d imagine that vision, though, didn’t entail one of his recent movies being released exclusively on iPhones. Yet, that was something reportedly pitched to him during a studio meeting – and you can imagine how the legendary director reacted.
A Wall Street Journal profile of NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell recounted a meeting he and Tarantino had during preliminary talks for the release of The Hateful Eight (via SlashFilm).
It reads: “Jeff Shell, at the time the head of the Universal studio, voiced his own pitch. ‘What if we released [The Hateful Eight] on iPhones?’ he said. ‘Great,’ Mr. Tarantino replied, and stormed out of the meeting.”
U2 albums aside, releasing a movie of such a scale on iPhones would be a bold move – but especially a movie that had a more definitive ‘Roadshow’ presentation, filmed on 70mm, complete with extra scenes and an intermission.
Tarantino, meanwhile, took his services over to The Weinstein Company who helped foot the bill for the 70mm expenses. Interestingly, the director later turned The Hateful Eight into a four-part miniseries on Netflix.
What next? Tenet on Zoom? No Time to Die through a cup-and-string? Ironically, the current cinema situation might allow for some more out-of-the-box film ideas to sift through, but giving Tarantino the option to release his pride and joy on something you can fit in your pocket was never going to end well. The only surprise was that he didn’t throw in a few f-bombs for good measure.
Here are the best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked!
- Everything new on Netflix this month
- The best Netflix movies
- The best Netflix shows
