Director Quentin Tarantino's murder mystery The Hateful Eight has become a strange meta-version of itself.

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Back in 2014, the first draft of his script for the film was leaked online and available to download as a PDF through Gawker. In response to the leak, Tarantino attempted to sue Gawker and announced The Hateful Eight's cancellation EW reports that a year later, Tarantino admits suing the online media conglomerate wasn't necessarily the best idea.“I almost regret the whole suing Gawker because it actually took the light off of what was important,” Tarantino said. “My whole thing wasn’t against Gawker, it was against Hollywood practices that have just been considered okay.”Tarantino later rescinded the film's cancellation and even staged a live reading of the now-changed script. But he was still suspicious of who might have leaked it in the first place.According to Tarantino, it was down to the three people with whom he had shared the script: The Hateful Eight stars Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen. One of them, he figured, had shared the script with their agent, who then leaked it online.“The reason it was so bad was because the small group of people involved who had to be guilty,” he said. “And these were people I trusted. Normally when I actually show it to people, I’m done. But this first draft was literally just showing it to just a few friends.""There were scenes that I wasn’t even ready to write yet, situations I hadn’t even figured out yet. That’s why it was so not ready for anybody but just a couple of the inner circle.”Since it was leaked, Tarantino made a number of changes to the script, including its ending. He was especially careful with it, keeping it guarded and only allowing a specific few in on the details.It still remains unknown who initially leaked The Hateful Eight's script online. But Tarantino claims he wants it to remain a mystery.“It was interesting because I wrote a mystery but I eventually kind of decided I didn’t want to know who did it,” he said. “I figured out who the three people it was least likely to be were and who the three people it was most likely to be were, and I was able to just say to myself, ‘It’s one of those six.’”The Hateful Eight is currently in production and is on track to release sometime later this year.

Cassidee is a freelance writer for various outlets around the web. You can chat with her about all things geeky on Twitter