Tarantino Eyeing a Couple of Superstar ‘Bastards’

It’s been a very interesting week in Tarantino land. The notoriously snail-paced auteur has not only delivered the script for his long discussed WW2 men on a mission flick Inglorious Bastards (or Inglourious Basterds according to QT’s hand scribbled cover page), but he’s also made constant promises to deliver the epic to next year’s Cannes – a suicide mission in and of itself. He has gone out of his way in recent months to talk about how he took a drastically different approach in writing the film by not writing the characters with specific actors in mind, instead letting his imagination run wild and then finding a cast that could deliver. So we knew there would be some serious casting change-ups this time around, but who would have guessed that he would be eyeing the likes of Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio?

That’s right, Tarantino looks to be hitting the A-List in search for his titular bastards. According to Variety the director traveled to France to meet with Pitt last week, ahead of the script going out to studios, about possibly playing the role of Aldo Raine. If that weren’t enough, he’s got a meeting setup later this week to meet with DiCaprio to join his rapidly growing posse as Hans Landa. Were he to snag both superstars they would easily be the biggest non-resurrected names ever to appear in any of his films, possibly ensuring his biggest budget ever in the process. While neither actor has ever directly worked with Tarantino, Pitt memorably played stoner Floyd in the QT scripted True Romance.

Though the project is still without a studio, word is bidding has been fierce since the script spread across town last week (and subsequently all over the interwebs). There were rumblings that Miramax had put up a huge some and picked it up, but that hasn’t been substantiated (though it would have been a very interesting turnabout). Expect the film to be picked up by someone within the next few days, especially if those two guys sign on.

I think of greatest interest to cinema goers is who else will QT cast? Bastards is a sprawling character piece with plenty of juicy roles to go around. Tarantino regulars Michael Madsen and Tim Roth have been associated with the project for years so their participation seems very likely. There were once strong indications that QT was interested in courting a murderer’s row of classic tough guys including the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, but who knows if that was ever true or if it was just Hollywood white noise (please let it be true…and get Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal while you’re at it!). Some other Tarantino regulars who I think will likely join the party are Bruce Willis and Kurt Russell (who are built for this kind of stuff), Uma Thurman, David Carradine (in Western mode), Michael Parks (likewise), and possibly Zoe Bell. Adam Sandler’s name was once part of the Bastards chatter as well which would be a very intriguing choice. The biggest question is who will be playing Hitler and Goebbels? I have yet to really crack my copy of the script so I won’t even venture to speculate before seeing how they’re characterized on the page. It should be an exciting next half year in Tarantino land, that’s for sure!