Quentin Tarantino accuses Disney of ‘extortion’ over Star Wars cinema booking

Quentin Tarantino has accused executives at the Walt Disney company of alleged “extortionist practices” in their refusal to relinquish a cinema in Los Angeles for showings of Tarantino’s new movie, The Hateful Eight. The Cinerama Dome in Hollywood is currently booked to play Star Wars: The Force Awakens throughout the holiday season, but Tarantino says he and distributors The Weinstein Company had a verbal agreement with the picture house to book it for a 70mm run of The Hateful Eight, which opens in the US on Christmas Day.

Appearing on The Howard Stern Show, Tarantino said Disney were “going out of their way to [expletive] me”.

“It’s vindictive, it’s mean and it’s extortion,” said the director, claiming that when the ArcLight chain (who own the Cinerama Dome) attempted to tell Disney they would honour their agreement to show The Hateful Eight, the studio then threatened to pull Star Wars from all the chain’s cinemas.

“It was real bad news and it [expletive] me off,” added Tarantino.

Disney premiered Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Monday evening in Los Angeles and has booked out multiple major venues in Hollywood, including the TCL Chinese Theatre and the Disney-owned El Capitan Theatre. But the studio also booked the Cinerama Dome months ago. The two films have also clashed for column inches; the review embargo for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was set to lift at 8am GMT on December 16. Twelve hours before, the embargo on The Hateful Eight was abruptly lifted (it had been set for December 21).

The Hollywood Reporter claims that the Weinstein Company would have long known that it could not secure the venue, but that Tarantino was only recently informed.