This is the last time this week you’ll see QT on the main page. I promise. I hope. Scroll down for the update. (Read: negation)

One Inglorious Bastards isn’t enough. We’ve waited for Quentin Tarantino’s war movie for years and years, so how about doubling your return? I’m not even talking about the upcoming 3-disc DVD release of Enzo Castellari’s film of the same name (finally! no more bootlegs!) upon which Tarantino’s version will be very loosely based.

Tarantino conducted an interview in LA with Castellari to appear as a special feature on the DVD set. AICN has seen the 40-minute discussion, which includes some info about the upcoming film. 

Revelation number one is that the story is supposedly so big that Tarantino plans to split it into two films. Grindhouse is an obvious reference point for that being a bad idea, but a combined $60m budget and $333m worldwide gross for the two Kill Bill films suggests otherwise.

The core of his story is basically the same as that of Castellari’s: a WWII military transport carrying criminals is ambushed by Nazis, killing everyone but the criminals, who head for Swizerland fighting both Axis and Allies along the way. Evidently a massively impressive opening sequence is planned, and as in the ‘original’ we might see a healthy dollop of slow motion.

The final detail AICN reveals is perhaps the most interesting: that Tarantino has decided not to write each character for a specific actor. Instead, he’s working the old-fashioned way, letting the characters become what they will. That represents a significant departure for Tarantino the writer, and if he can pull it off might make Inglorious Bastards tonally different, at least slightly, from everything else he’s made.

But I’m still in the position where I have doubts about any of this actually happening. Especially the ‘two films’ part. We’ve heard so much of this before, albeit not in this much detail. Someone get Spike Lee’s new subject to finish his time machine so we can skip forward to Cannes ’09 and see if this movie appears at the festival, at least as a funded project about to go into production.

UPDATE: Anne Thompson talked to Tarantino on the 12th of June at the AFI’s tribute to Warren Beatty, and he says the “he’s aiming to deliver at Pulp Fiction length”, the original cut of which runs 154 minutes. Doesn’t sound like two films.
 
[via The Playlist]