After a brief but intense wooing period where major Hollywood studios lined up like contestants on The Bachelor in hopes of catching the director’s attention, Quentin Tarantino has decided to shack up with Sony. Tarantino, as you may recall, recently found himself a free agent after his long-term business partner, Harvey Weinstein, turned out to be an (alleged) walking sack of rapist garbage. A couple of weeks after the allegations first emerged, Tarantino gave an interview to The New York Times in which he claimed that he knew Harvey was a piece of shit, but not that much of a piece of shit, and said, “I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard.” New studio aside, things have continued basically as normal for him from there.
Anyhow, now that Tarantino’s next movie—working title No. 9—has a home, work can begin on casting. Tarantino has the power to pick anyone he wants in this sense, too, and has reportedly met with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio about the two main male roles. (Fingers crossed for a knife fight at midnight, dressed in all black, to decide who has to go.) He’s more single-minded when it comes to the film’s female lead, and according to Deadline he’s “hoping hard” that Margot Robbie will play the role, reportedly inspired by Sharon Tate. The film has been widely reported to be about Charles Manson and his murderous “family,” but apparently that’s only a tangential part of the story. As Tarantino put it at an event honoring Sofia Coppola last week, “It’s not Charles Manson, it’s 1969.”