Channing Tatum is set to join Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, reports Deadline. The unspecified part in the western is apparently a major role.
Tatum, who is also in line to play the superhero Gambit in a standalone film for X-Men studio Twentieth Century Fox, would star alongside Samuel L Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell and Tim Roth in the film, which has been likened to a tense stage play. Said to resemble the director’s early films Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction in style and tone, the story is about a pair of bounty hunters transporting prisoners through 19th-century Wyoming. Further characters include a renegade Confederate soldier and a female prisoner in a saloon.
The Hateful Eight remains on course to shoot in January, with Tarantino expected to utilise large-format film. Distributor the Weinstein Company said in September that the movie would have the widest 70mm release in more than 20 years.
Tararantino abandoned plans for The Hateful Eight in January in a fit of pique after a version of the script was leaked on to the internet, but later backtracked. He staged a live reading of the movie’s screenplay at the United Artists theatre in Los Angeles in April with Jackson, Dern, Madsen, Russell, James Remar, Amber Tamblyn, Walton Goggins and Zoe Bell taking the main roles.
Tatum has been Hollywood hot property since conceiving and starring in the semi-autobiographical Magic Mike with Steven Soderbergh in 2012. He will appear in sequel Magic Mike XXL next year and has been drawing Oscar buzz for his turn as an Olympic gold-medal wrestler in Bennett Miller’s upcoming Foxcatcher.
