COMMENTARY: Why Has Tarantino Turned The Hateful Eight into a Netflix Miniseries?1 min read
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A chill was felt on the strange, slightly obsessive corner of social media known as film Twitter. First a breeze, then a blizzard’s howl. Netflix had taken Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and done something to it. It was now a TV show? With episodes? No, wait! It’s a new version with over 40 minutes of new material? Heads exploded like Channing Tatum’s at the end of the gruesome (but strangely hilarious) post-civil war western. What is going on?
A quick glance on Netflix shows that The Hateful Eight: Extended Version’s “season one” is four chapters at a respective running time of 50, 51, 53 and 56 minutes. The version that was already on Netflix (and the one that still shows up first when you do a search, at least on my Roku) is 167 minutes. Even a period-appropriate abacus will show you that there is a differential here of 43. So the answer to both questions of “is it changed?” and “is it longer?” is an annoying “yes, technically, but not really”.
Let’s walk through this in a slow and methodical way like Samuel L Jackson negotiating a carriage ride from Kurt Russell.
Image credit: Andrew Cooper
