Quentin Tarantino wants to adapt Elmore Leonard novel as TV miniseries

NEW YORK, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight filmmaker Quentin Tarantino says his next western-themed project may be for the small screen.

"The third western could actually be a TV thing," the 52-year-old auteur revealed at a New York press conference Monday.

"I've owned the rights for awhile. I get them and I lose them and I get them and I lose them, but there is something about the piece that I think really demands that I make it. It's an Elmore Leonard book called Forty Lashes Less One and I actually think, if you want to call yourself a western director today, you need to do at least three westerns. Back in the '50s, it would be like 12, alright. But, today, it is three, if you really want to put your westerns on the shelf with people like Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann and [Sam] Peckinpah and stuff. And I would really like to do Forty Lashes Less One as kind of a miniseries. ... I'd write it all and I'd direct it all, but maybe it's four hours or five hours. Something like that and it would fit right along lines with -- if you'd ever read the book -- it would fit right along the lines of The Hateful Eight and Django. It deals with race. It all takes place in Yuma Territorial Prison and it's a really good book and I've always wanted to tell the story. So, we'll see. I'm hoping I'll do that eventually."

So, will the writer-director shoot the project on film as opposed to the cheaper and more popular video?

"Oh, yeah, absolutely. I will never shoot on digital," he vowed.