How much Basterdly action might we eventually see? “I have a half-written prequel ready to go if this movie’s a smash,” Quentin Tarantino told the New York Times. The quote runs at the end of a piece discussing Tarantino’s methods and influences that came into play while creating Inglorious Basterds. Which, against all odds, premieres at Cannes in just nine days. According to the Times, the potential prequel script focuses on a group of African-American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if Tarantino could find a way to hit with the same sort of material that was a bust for Spike Lee? Granted, that does require Basterds to make some bucks (not a given) and for Tarantino to actually follow through. Since there was a half-written script for this movie stretching back into the past decade, not to mention the other prequel/sequel ideas QT has talked up over the years, I’m not holding my breath. Yet stranger things have happened, like this movie being finished just a year after we thought it would never happen.
Read the Times piece for a couple good photos from Basterds, a bit of screen test footage from Diane Kruger, and just enough tantalizing details about how he’s made his own movie-influenced historial action picture to make you happy you didn’t actually read the leaked script.