Esteemed director Quentin Tarantino has dropped the first trailer for his impending, brooding western, The Hateful Eight, showcasing eight strangers with dark emotions and growing cabin fever. According to the YouTube video description, the film is set "six or eight or 12 years after the Civil War," trailing a bounty hunter John "the Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his outlaw Daisy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) on a lenghty journey.

The two are forced to settle in at Minnie's Haberdashery while a vicious Wyoming storm rolls in, halting their route to Red Rock. Eventually, they join forces with former union solder and bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Chris Mannix, a shady southerner who asserts that he's the newest sheriff in town (Walton Goggins). The foursome link up with four more tenants at Minnie's, the interim caretakers Bob (Demián Bichir), cow-puncher Joe (Michael Madsen), Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern) and Red Rock hangman Oswaldo (Tim Roth).

"One of them fellas is not what he says he is," says the Hangman in the latest trailer. The more than two-minute clip boasts telltale Tarantino flair, complete with sharp line delivery, a wide screen point-of-view and an abundance of gunshots. The Hateful Eight is due out Decemeber 25 in 70mm format ahead of its widespread release on January 8, 2016. Known for his work in legendary westerns such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, composer Ennio Morricone will take on the score for Tarantino's latest venture.

Upon its original announcement in November 2013, the Pulp Fiction mastermind cancelled its release after a January 2014 script leak. After battling with a decision to possibly morph the screenplay into a novel, Tarantino held a script reading with the Hateful Eight cast at Los Angeles' United Artists Theater. Eventually, he trudged on to begin filming in Telluride, CO during January of this year.

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