Quentin Tarantino sues Gawker over leaked script

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- A week after Quentin Tarantino decided to pull the plug on what he had hoped would be his next film because the script leaked online, the acclaimed director has filed a lawsuit against Gawker for making it available to the public.

The Oscar-winning director's lawsuit claims that rather than reporting the story on The Hateful Eight script being leaked, Gawker went out of its way to publish it in its entirety and even encouraged the audience to read it.

"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck," the 50-year-old director said in his lawsuit "This time they went too far."

Tarantino is suing the news blog for copyright infringement.

Last week, the Django Unchained director said he was "very depressed" after learning that the first draft of a film he meant to shoot in the winter of 2014 had leaked online after he had given it to just six people.

"There is an ugly maliciousness to the rest of it," Tarantino said of the leak.

Among the six people who had access to the script were "one of the producers on Django Unchained," Reggie Hudlin, an unnamed agent, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth.

"The one I know didn’t do this is Tim Roth," the Inglourious Basterds director told Deadline. "One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood."

[TMZ] [Gawker] [Deadline]