Get the Scoop on Quentin Tarantino's New Movie 'Django Unchained'

From "Reservoir Dogs" to "Kill Bill," Quentin Tarantino's style has always been heavily influenced by Spaghetti Westerns, and Italian director Sergio Leone in particular.

"For film geeks, for all the directors and movies we can talk about, Sergio Leone is the one you can even talk about with your mom and dad because they know who he is. He's that famous. He also created one of the biggest screen icons of cinema with Clint Eastwood. He essentially created a character to replace John Wayne with his films," the director once gushed.

Now comes news that he's going to get more literal about the whole deal. IndieWire reported this week that Tarantino is moving ahead with a new film "Django Unchained,"using a new script inspired by the work the director did as an actor on Takashi Miike's 2007 film "Sukikyaki Western Django," itself inspired by a series of Italian films from the 60's and 70's.

Production is reportedly slated to begin summer or fall or this year, and while Variety is reporting that Tarantino "has not yet made any significant casting decisions," several other sources have reported that "Inglorious Basterds" star Christopher Waltz will be joining the cast of the film.

The Weinstein Company has confirmed they are on board to distribute the film and Warner Bros. and Paramount are apparently in discussions over who will handle financing and distribution worldwide. Certainly that discussion will be heated, considering Tarantino's last film "Inglorious Basterds" garnered $193 million globally and received 8 Academy Award nominations.

A copy of the script cover has been leaked via Twitter, and IndieWire got its hands on a synopsis from an unnamed source who had read the script:

“Django is a freed slave, who, under the tutelage of a German bounty hunter (played by Christopher Waltz the evil Nazi officer in Inglorious Basterds) becomes a bad-ass bounty hunter himself, and after assisting Waltz in taking down some bad guys for profit, is helped by Waltz in tracking down his slave wife and liberating her from an evil plantation owner. And that doesn’t even half begin to cover it! This film deals with racism as I’ve rarely seen it handled in a Hollywood film. While it’s 100 percent pure popcorn and revenge flick, it is pure genius in the way it takes on the evil slave owning south. Think of what he did with the Nazis in Inglorious and you’ll get a sense of what he’s doing with slave owners and slave overseers in this one.”

So the film will return to the racism-revenge theme at the core of "Inglorious Basterds" and (come to think of it) "Pulp Fiction." Perhaps Tarantino has learned you can get audiences to cheer louder for bloodying up racist or Anti-Semitic bad guys than you can by slicing the ear off of cops?

Anyway, we're incredibly geeked about this one, and are really glad Tarantino's filling his time with something other than suing Alan Ball over his parrots.

We'll keep you posted as we hear more about what Q's up to with his latest flick.