Quentin Tarantino is suing celebrity gossip site Gawker following the leak of his script for The Hateful Eight, which he is no longer making into a movie.
The famed director filed suit accusing the blog of the following:
"Blatant copyright infringement by the promotion and dissemination of unauthorized downloadable copies of the leaked unreleased complete screenplay."
"There was nothing newsworthy or journalistic" about it, Tarantino alleges.
He is seeking damages reportedly in excess of $1 million for the action.
Furthermore, while Gawker did not post the script to its own site, Tarantino says it would not have been widely accessible if Gawker had not linked to it. Often.
Gawker turned down repeated requests to remove links to download the script, the complaint charges. A Gawker post offering links to it is still online.
The celebrity gossip site did not respond to a request for comment.
The Hateful Eight is/was a Western, the same genre as Tarantino’s 2012 hit Django Unchained, which won him an Academy Award for writing.
After the script leaked online, Tarantino’s spokesman told CNN that the director was furious, and shelving plans to produce The Hateful Eight himself.
He told Deadline that he had given the script to only six people, including actors Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Tim Roth. Somehow, it got out.
Instead of directing the film himself, Tarantino is expected to sell the script and will instead take into production a second script he was working on.
Here’s hoping he gets to the bottom of this. In the meantime, don’t bother trying to download it while there’s legal action pending against Gawker.
Just watch Pulp Fiction online instead. Quentin would be okay with that.