Quentin Tarantino Accuses Disney Of Extorting Theater To Continue Playing ‘Star Wars’ Instead Of ‘Hateful 8’

Quentin Tarantino went off on Disney during a recent interview, claiming that the major studio extorted a Los Angeles theater to force them to continue playing Star Wars: The Force Awakens instead of playing his new movie, The Hateful Eight.

Quentin Tarantino On Disney

Tarantino appeared on Sirius XM’s The Howard Stern Show Wednesday morning, where he ranted about Disney’s alleged extortion practices.

“We were gonna play at the Cinerama Dome on the 25th. We were gonna open there and play there exclusively for two weeks. And Star Wars was gonna play the two weeks before us,” Tarantino told Howard Stern. “And I grew up in Los Angeles, so I think of the Cinerama Dome as a real big deal and imagine seeing it at the Cinerama Dome. So the thing about it was, Disney, who owns Star Wars, decided ‘well, you know what? Maybe we wanna play throughout the entire holiday season.’ So we’re gonna go to the Cinerama Dome and say that they can’t honor their contract with us to show The Hateful Eight.”

“And the Arclight people that own the Cinerama Dome, said ‘no no, you can’t do that. We have a deal with the Hateful Eight people, and showing it in 70[mm]. That’s what we do.’ We have the 70mm projectors. They didn’t have to move them in. That’s the thing. We even start off with the Cinerama logo at the beginning [of The Hateful Eight]…by the way, [Star Wars is] playing at the Cinerama Dome and the Grauman’s Chinese Theater, one mile away from each other.

Despite Arclight and Cinerama Dome’s efforts, The Hateful Eight got bumped from the rotation after Disney allegedly made a threat to withhold the biggest movie in the world from the theater.

“As of yesterday, Disney came to the Arclight people and said ‘no, you are going to play Star Wars in the Cinerama Dome for the entire holiday season, and if you don’t, if you honor your deal with the Hateful Eight, we will not allow you to have Star Wars, the biggest movie in the world, we will not allow you to show it at any of your Arclight movie theaters.'”

While Tarantino is clearly livid with Disney, he’s not pointing the finger at the Star Wars franchise as a whole or at director J.J. Abrams. After airing his grievances, Tarantino is hopeful that his fellow filmmaker will make an effort to reverse Disney’s actions.

“I would hope that that would be the case,” Tarantino said, adding of Disney’s supposed move, “It’s vindictive, it’s mean and it’s extortion. They literally threatened the Arclight.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters in wide release Friday, Dec. 18. The Hateful Eight will premiere Christmas Day.