With luck, news leaking out that Quentin Tarantino is quietly putting together his next cine-project won't put him off the idea the way the script leak for The Hateful Eight delayed that film. Still, The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the man behind Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds is working up his own take on the Manson murders.
The 1969 case saw Charles Manson order four of his followers to attack the inhabitants of a house in Los Angeles he believed owned by a record producer who rejected him. The resulting home invasion left actress Sharon Tate (then married to Roman Polanski, and pregnant) dead, along with four others. Quite what angle Tarantino is intending to take is still a mystery, if indeed this is his latest film.
It would be an outlier in his work since the subject matter, even more than Basterds alt-history story, would dramatise real events, and would require a certain level of sensitivity given the tragic nature of the incident. But he has said previously that he'd been researching 1960s/1970s history, so perhaps it was all for this?
THR has heard that Tarantino is still writing the script and that Basterds' Brad Pitt and possibly Jennifer Lawrence have already been approached, with studios expected to see the screenplay later this summer. Deadline's sources, meanwhile, have been saying that Margot Robbie is a potential Sharon Tate, and that QT regular Samuel L. Jackson might be involved. If it does indeed come together, the director is apparently hoping to kick off production next year.