Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker for disseminating his “Hateful Eight” script.
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Up until last week, the world was to one day, in the next two years or so, be blessed with a new Quentin Tarantino film, “The Hateful Eight.” Instead all we’re getting is a melodrama far more unpleasant than anything in any of his bloody, sweary, racial epithet-heavy pictures.
First, one of the six copies of the script he sent out to prospective actors was leaked. In a fury, Tarantino announced he was cancelling the project. Shortly thereafter, Gawker’s Defamer blog posted a link to a copy of the script, with the note, “Enjoy!”
Now they’re getting sued for allegedly helping to spread illegal copies of his unproduced screenplay, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck,” the lawsuit reads. “This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally.”
The lawsuit, published by Martin Singer and Evan Spiegel at Lavely & Singer in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, stresses that the Defamer post used the word “Here” to show where one can find the script. “The article then contains multiple direct links for downloading the entire Screenplay through a conveniently anonymous URL,” it goes on to say.
Tarantino is seeking actual and statutory damages plus at least $1 million in Gawker’s profits.
Incidentally, if you did wind up reading the leaked script, you’d see that it boasts that it would have been shot on 70mm film. Enjoy that salt in the wound.
