Quentin Tarantino went on the Howard Stern SiriusXM radio show and spoke about how Disney is strong-arming Arclight Cinemas to push the director’s 70MM presentation of his eighth film The Hateful Eight aside in favor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in LA’s famed Cinemarama Dome. The director first learned about this on Monday. The western was originally due to play there, claims Tarantino, starting on Dec. 25th, but now Force Awakens is getting an extended play through the holidays.
“It was real bad news and it fucking pissed me off,” Tarantino told Stern. “They are going out of their way to fuck me.”
All per Tarantino: when ArcLight Cinemas told Disney they were honoring their contract for Hateful Eight, Disney threatened to pull Force Awakens from all ArcLight locations.
Living here in L.A., The Cinerama Dome is a prized venue for Tarantino. In fact that the Cinerama logo appears in the opening credits of The Hateful Eight. The premiere for the film was held on Monday, Dec. 7 at the Cinerama Dome and the director told Deadline’s Pete Hammond, “I made The Hateful Eight for the Dome…This is the first time seeing it at the Dome for me too, and it was like I hadn’t even seen it before, not like this.”
“It’s vindictive, it’s mean, and it’s extortion,” Tarantino added. The Oscar-winning fimmaker further added that his beef isn’t with Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, but with the top suits at Disney. In fact, Abrams worked with Tarantino when the director starred as McKenas Cole on Abrams’ ABC show Alias. “I made a lot of money for the Disney corporation,” Tarantino told Stern referring to the days when Disney owned Miramax and released such titles as Pulp Fiction ($213.9M worldwide) and the Kill Bill two pic saga (combined $333M worldwide) as well as Jackie Brown ($40M domestic).
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