Are You Okay, Quentin Tarantino? Disney Forced Hateful Eight Out of the Cinerama Dome

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According to him, Disney strong-armed his movie out of the theater in order to keep The Force Awakens showing there through the holiday. Allegedly, Disney threatened to pull The Force Awakens from Arclight completely if Arclight didn’t comply. Oof.

If you’ve been following coverage of The Hateful Eight, you know this is a particularly sticky issue for Tarantino because he shot the film in 70mm and had specific theaters set up to show the film that way on Christmas Day. The Cinerama Dome was one of those theaters.

He took to the Howard Stern Show to voice his displeasure:

It was real bad news and it fucking pissed me off. They are going out of their way to fuck me. It’s vindictive, it’s mean, and it’s extortion. I made a lot of money for the Disney corporation.

As Indiewire’s Kevin Jagernauth pointed out, Tarantino once worked under the Miramax label, which was owned by Disney. So he’s right, there. He has made a lot of money for Disney. But the other stuff about how it’s all to fuck him? Ehh.

Consider this from the theater’s angle: it would’ve been silly to not have The Force Awakens showing on Christmas Day. It’s a proven moneymaker, and guarantees profits for any theater that’s showing it. But on the other hand, they did have a contract with Tarantino to show The Hateful Eight, another movie that’s sure to bring in a decent amount of money. It feels like this decision came down to which movie the theater felt would bring in more money including the potential loss of either contract.

While pissing off Tarantino isn’t the best idea, it’s an even worse one to piss off Disney, especially when they have a movie like The Force Awakens under their belt.

A small part of me feels for the dude. It sucks to get booted out of a theater, especially one that’s specially equipped for how you want your movie to be seen, and especially especially one you had a legal contract with. But damn, dude. I really don’t think they’re going out of their way to fuck with you specifically. Isn’t that a little paranoid?

You can listen to the full segment below.

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Jessica Lachenal
Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.