Tarantino releases the first real trailer for 'The Hateful Eight'

The director's second Western, coming barely three years after the release of "Django Unchained," takes place in the wintry Wyoming landscape some years after the American Civil War (1861-1865). Conspiracies, betrayals and general shenanigans abound in "The Hateful Eight," which, as the name hints at, revolves around eight protagonists who seek refuge from a storm at Minnie's Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass.

The eight protagonists, played by Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Damian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins and Bruce Dern, all feature in the trailer.

We are first presented with bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), racing towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as "The Hangman," will bring Domergue to justice. Along the way, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town's new sheriff. The blizzard forces them to stop at Minnie's, where instead of being greeted by the proprietor, they meet four new faces. Bob (Bichir), who's taking care of the place while Minnie is visiting her mother, is holed up with Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen) and Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Dern).

A movie that almost didn't happen

The mouthwatering two-minute trailer is sure to inspire Tarantino fans to line up on Christmas Day, when the film begins an exclusive two-week roadshow in 70mm nationwide. The plan is to follow that with a digital wide release on January 8, 2016. According to the Weinstein Company, this will mark the widest 70mm release that the industry has seen in more than 20 years, an amazing feat considering the fact that not long ago, "The Hateful Eight" seemed destined to never see the light of day.

In early 2014, an early draft of Tarantino's script was leaked online, leading the director to threaten to scrap the project altogether. Furious, he lashed out at Gawker, suing the site for publishing the leaked pages. He eventually retracted his lawsuit and started casting for the film, even giving fans a sneak peek at what he had in store for them with a rare 3 1/2 hour live table read in Los Angeles that included most of the actors that made into the final cast.

When filming finally began in November 2014, Tarantino chose to shoot in Colorado for the exterior scenes and, to ensure as much authenticity as possible, forced his cast to act on a refrigerated set.

Check out the trailer: