Quentin Tarantino has contemplated doing TV recently and it seems there’s an Elmore Leonard novel he has in mind for a miniseries…
Quentin Tarantino has fallen in love with the Western genre of late and with his next film The Hateful Eight set to come out on Christmas Day, he’s already looking towards the future where he may have another project in mind — this time for television.
Tarantino said in a recent interview that he owns the rights to a famous Elmore Leonard novel — the same author he adapted to make Jackie Brown and also responsible for Justified on FX — and he’s contemplating bringing it to television as a miniseries.
“It always takes me a while before thinking about the future,” Tarantino said. “That said, I own the rights to this book I’ve wanted to adapt for a while, and the time may have come for me to tackle it. This is Forty Lashes Less One, by Elmore Leonard, which could be my third Western. I’m considering taking the project to TV, in the form of a mini-series of four or six hours.”
Tarantino stated over the summer at San Diego Comic Con that he was considering a future that might include a television project considering how much the platform has grown in recent years, especially with expansion into Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and other providers.
The description of Forty Lashes Less One sounds like something right up Tarantino’s alley:
“The hell called Yuma Prison can destroy the soul of any man. And it’s worse for those whose damning crime is the color of their skin. The law says Chiricahua Apache Raymond San Carlos and black-as-night former soldier Harold Jackson are murderers, and they’ll stay behind bars until they’re dead and rotting. But even in the worst place on Earth, there’s hope. And for two hard and hated inmates — first enemies, then allies by necessity — it waits at the end of a mad and violent contest … on a bloody trail that winds toward Arizona’s five most dangerous men.”
For now, Tarantino will stay focused on the release of The Hateful Eight into theaters before tackling his next project but television would definitely be a welcome addition to his already impressive resume.
Tarantino has been well known as a storyteller who hates to be confined by time limits — television would certainly provide him the format to expand his format in a much larger manner than ever before.
H/T: Empire
