Christoph-Waltz-and-Bruce-Dern-eyed-for-The-Hateful-EightAt the tail-end of last year, word surfaced that Quentin Tarantino was close to finishing writing his next film, and that it would be a Western like his latest masterpiece, Django Unchained. Fortunately we’ve not had to wait long for more news to surface, with Deadline reporting that Tarantino has reportedly finished a draft, and that the working title for the movie is The Hateful Eight.

The report notes that Tarantino is now in the process of showing the script to a handful of actors, which is usually followed by him going back to hone the script before shooting. And already two very promising names have surfaced.

Christoph Waltz is one of the two, and should naturally come as no surprise to anyone. Waltz has won two Oscars under Tarantino’s direction for his outstanding supporting performances in Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, and I would love to see the duo work together once more. Waltz has a calibre matched by very, very few actors in recent memory, and his work in Inglourious and Django really speaks for itself – as do the Oscars he’s won for the roles.

The second name to surface here is an interesting choice in Bruce Dern. The actor is coming off very high praise for his leading role in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, which saw him take home the Best Actor award at the film’s Cannes bow last year. Naturally, he’s a very big contender heading towards this week’s Oscar nominations announcement.

If the title is anything to go by, it certainly sounds like we might have an even more impressive ensemble cast to join the two, if everything goes well. Django had a bit of a troubled time with casting, so here’s to hoping that The Hateful Eight will be a smoother ride all around.

Speaking on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last year, Tarantino revealed that his follow-up to Django would be a Western:

I had so much fun doing Django, and I love Westerns so much that after I taught myself how to make one, it’s like ‘OK! Let me make another one now that I know what I’m doing.’

Plot details for the tentatively-titled The Hateful Eight are of course being kept under wraps at this point, but if Tarantino has finished the first draft, we can definitely take that as a good sign. With any luck, he’ll have the shooting script ready before the year’s end, and if all goes well, here’s to hoping that it will be arriving in cinemas for Christmas 2016, maybe even Christmas 2015 if we’re lucky.