Somehow, even amid the din of shrieking macaws, Quentin Tarantino has managed to make some serious progress on his spaghetti Western-influenced “Southern,” and quite a bit of that progress was revealed in what was easily the most important announcement of the weekend. It all started with a leak of the first page of the script (see below), followed by Thompson On Hollywood confirming that the title is indeed Django Unchained (“Ohhhh Django, my darling…”)—which, given that we first learned of this project through Italian actor Franco Nero, suggests that it could be at least a partial homage to the Nero-starring 1966 spaghetti Western Django, much like Takashi Miike’s recent Sukiyaki Western Django, which boasted a cameo from… Quentin Tarantino. Suddenly it all begins to make sense.
Also confirmed is that Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds breakout Christoph Waltz will reteam with the director, playing a German bounty hunter who trains a freed slave in the ways of being badass, with the two of them then teaming up to rescue the ex-slave’s wife from an evil plantation owner. This would all seem to coincide with Tarantino’s earlier suggestion that he’d like to do for Southern slavery what he did with the Nazi regime—namely, remake history as a fun, genre-riffic romp. Of course, he’s yet to officially confirm any of this, but all of the sources seem reliable, and Deadline even has some more concrete information on the production coming together in time for a fall start date. In the meantime, here’s the visual proof in the form of the first, handwritten page of the script—which, as soon as shooting is completed, is going right up on the refrigerator so that everyone can see.