First trailer released for new Tarantino movie

After initial doubt that this movie would ever be made, the first trailer for Quentin Tarantino's latest movie was released this morning.

The Hateful Eight, a post-Civil War western, focuses on eight strangers holed up in a stagecoach stopover in Wyoming during a blizzard. The trailer teases an unknown connection between the group that causes tensions to erupt as they remain trapped together.

"One of them fellows is not what he says he is," Kurt Russel's John 'The Hangman' Ruth says.

A scene from Quentin Tarantino's new film The Hateful Eight.

The film stars many of Tarantino's regulars, including Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth and Kiwi Zoe Bell, whose role as Six-Horse Judy marks her fifth collaboration in a row with Tarantino.

The Hateful Eight came close to not happening. When a version of the script leaked online on January 2014, Tarantino said he was cancelling the movie. He later staged a live-reading of it that April, and decided a month later to move ahead with production.

It is Tarantino's first film since Django Unchained, which won him an Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay.

The film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins and Channing Tatum in an unspecified role. The Hollywood Reporter said in June that it is likely the first movie since 1966 to film using Ultra Panavision 70 lenses, part of Tarantino's plans for film preservation.

The Hateful Eight is due for release on Christmas Day in America; there is no New Zealand release date yet.

- nzherald.co.nz