Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Hateful Eight’ back on, report says

Quentin Tarantino might be saddling up to direct his ensemble western “The Hateful Eight� — which he emphatically mothballed after a script leak and sued Gawker Media over — after all.

A Showbiz411 report says the director intends to start shooting the film in Wyoming in November, with a cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Amber Tamblyn and Kurt Russell.

Speculation has swirled over what would become of “The Hateful Eight� since Tarantino first complained to Deadline Hollywood in January that the script had been leaked and that he was “very, very depressed.� As a result, he said, he would shelve the film and publish the screenplay as a book.

The saga took another turn when Gawker posted third-party download links to the script on its Defamer blog, prompting Tarantino to sue the media company for copyright infringement. After some legal back-and-forth, Tarantino withdrew the lawsuit earlier this month.

In the meantime, Tarantino directed a staged reading of “The Hateful Eight� with a star-studded cast at the theater at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in April, further fueling conjecture that he was still interested in making the film. During the reading, Tarantino said he was still working on drafts of the screenplay.

At the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, Tarantino also told reporters he was reconsidering his proclamation that he wouldn’t make “The Hateful Eight.�

“We’ll see. I’m still writing the script right now,� he said. “I have calmed down a bit. The knife-in-the-back wound has started to scab.�