Several weeks ago, the screenplay for the next Quentin Tarantino movie, The Hateful Eight, leaked, and he shut down the project in disgust. He also filed a lawsuit against the site Gawker for posting a link to the script.
By this time, we figured the scripts would have been pulled everywhere, and this would be the end of it, but apparently this is not the case. Gawker vowed to fight this one, and the next part of this story really struck us as odd. We thought the site was joking when it replied in the lawsuit that the company was based in the Cayman Islands.
Trying to get the suit dismissed, a motion claimed that the court had no “personal jurisdiction over Gawker Media Group, a Cayman Islands corporation…it does not have any continuous and systematic contacts with California…it is a Cayman Islands holding company.”
As the Reporter tells us, this suit could also set precedent over “secondary liability and news reporting privileges,” but we seriously doubt it’s going to get that far. We don’t think the suit will get dismissed on the “Cayman Islands” grounds, and we still believe this whole thing will go away when cooler heads prevail.
We also believe this is a grudge suit, probably because the site posted stories on Tarantino the director didn’t like, and this was the last straw before he decided to sue. We’re sure Tarantino will launch another movie again one of these days, we just recommend he not give the script out to anybody, and have people read it at his home instead. (JJ Abrams could give him a few pointers on how to keep something a secret.)
