Recently news came to light that the amazing Ennio Morricone might be scoring Quentin Tarantino's new film Inglorious Basterds. But then there were doubts; the Quentin Tarantino Archives pulled their story, then put it back up, all while the Italian source article remained.

Confirmation came via Variety on Friday, albeit buried in an item in the trade's Music and Tech blog. It confirms that Morricone accepted an offer to score the film, but there's a catch. Shooting should wrap in February and Tarantino faces an April delivery date to make the Cannes film fest, as per his goal stated at the festival this year. That doesn't leave Morricone a lot of time to work, and the man doesn't like to be rushed.

"That doesn't leave me enough time to do the music. Either I start working on it before he stops shooting -- after we discuss it together -- or I just can't do it," Morricone says. "I might end up just writing a couple of tracks."

Which is ironic, as that's more or less exactly what he refused to to for Pulp Fiction. (Granted, he did offer new music for Kill Bill, which Tarantino refused in favor of using old Morricone cues.) But even 'just a couple of tracks' would be great. In fact, I'd almost rather hear that he's decided to do only a few tracks, into which Tarantino could pour whatever influence he's likely to have (not a whole lot, I expect, no matter what he wants) and upon which Morricone could really bring his skills to bear.

In other Inglorious Basterds news, the QT Archives is reporting that Eli Roth is the director of Nation's Pride, the movie's 'film within a film' about a Nazi sniper. The info comes from an on-set extra, and while unconfirmed, wouldn't be a surprising development. In fact, after Roth's contribution to Grindhouse, I'd be excited to see what he could do with a couple minutes of time within Tarantino's movie.