ENNIO MORRICONE & QUENTIN TARANTINO LAUNCH THE HATEFUL EIGHT SOUNDTRACK, AVAILABLE DECEMBER 18

To mark the launch of Quentin Tarantino’s new film The Hateful Eight and its thrilling new score from Ennio Morricone, both artists met for a special event at Abbey Road Studios. Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight Original Motion Picture soundtrack features compositions from Ennio Morricone and will be released on December 18, 2015.

Tarantino and actors Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins watched as Morricone conducted the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in a live recording of music from The Hateful Eight, cut to vinyl. As a gift to fans, those who pre-order the album will be given the chance to receive one of these hand-stamped, direct-to-vinyl editions through www.thehatefuleightsoundtrack.com, while supplies last.

While they were at Abbey Road, Morricone, Tarantino, Russell, Goggins and the orchestra signed the famous wall outside Abbey Road, which had been covered in The Hateful Eight artwork. Just hours later, Morricone’s score for The Hateful Eight was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Original Score category.

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music

While Tarantino is a lifelong fan of Morricone’s work and has used his music in his past five films, this historic collaboration marks the first time Morricone has recorded original score specifically for one of Tarantino’s films. It is also the first time Morricone has scored a Western film in over 40 years, since the release of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

In The Hateful Eight, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of red rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former Union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Demian Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of red rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to red rock after all…

The Hateful Eight film will be released on December 25, 2015, screening exclusively in glorious Ultra Panavision 70 mm film for a limited period and going wide in January 2016.

Written and directed by Academy Award-winner Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight is produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Stacey Sher, and Shannon McIntosh. The executive producers are Georgia Kacandes, Harvey Weinstein, and Bob Weinstein.

https://youtu.be/gnRbXn4-Yis