The Hateful Eight Stars Grace EW Cover: See the First Cast Photo for Quentin Tarantino's New, Bloody Movie

Film stars the likes of Kurt Russell, Samuel J. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Channing Tatum, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and more

By Corinne Heller May 07, 2015 7:40 PMTags
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Introducing Quentin Tarantino's "Hateful Eight"! Well, part of the group.

Kurt Russell, sporting a fantastic handbar mustache and mutton chops, Samuel L. Jackson, showing off an impressive 'stache himself, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting braided hair and no facial hair whatsoever, appear on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly dressed as their characters in the director's new Western movie, The Hateful Eight.

The magazine dubs the film a "bloody, brutal new western" and the "meanest, grittiest, deadliest movie of the year." The Hateful Eight is set several years after the Civil War. Russell plays John "The Hangman" Ruth, who escorts Leigh's character, a fugitive named Daisy Domergue, through snowy Wyoming to Red Rock to bring her to justice. On the EW cover, Russell holds a shotgun and is handcuffed to Leigh, who appears with a black eye and a bloody scratch on the side of her chin.

Along the way, in true Tarantino style, they meet a slew of different and possibly bizarre characters. Jackson plays a bounty hunter who used to be a Union soldier, named Major Marquis Warren. In the film, "eight of the West's nastiest gunslingers" get trapped in a "snowbound frontier way station, each wrapped in as many layers of deceit as they are clothing," EW reported.

Russell and Jackson are both Tarantino movie vets, while Leigh has never worked with the director before. Other cast members of the movie include Tarantino film stars Tim RothMichael MadsenBruce Dern and Justified and Sons of Anarchy actor Walton Goggins and fellow newbie Demián Bichir.

A previous promo image for The Hateful Eight shows the movie's logo, which depicts the numeral 8 as a blood spatter.

In addition to directing, Tarantino also wrote the screenplay for The Hateful Eight, which marks his first film since Django Unchained, which won him an Oscar in 2013, His new Western does not yet have a U.S. release date but is expected to hit theaters later this year.