While the movie won’t hit theaters until later this year, the people of Telluride already are crowning Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” a blockbuster.

From October through February, Tarantino filmed part of his $44 million feature film in Telluride. His crew — close to 170 people — booked 9,000 room nights during the production. The moviemakers dined, shopped and even skied with specially created “Hateful 8” ski passes.

” ‘The Hateful Eight’ did have a major impact, but the question is how much of an impact,” said Michael Martelon, chief of the Telluride Tourism Board. “When producers were looking for accommodations back in September, I told them I was predicting a record year without the movie, and ‘The Hateful Eight’ just pushed us further down the road.”

The movie — a post-Civil War Western starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bruce Dern — revolves around eight mean travelers trapped in a blizzard in a remote Wyoming town’s haberdashery.

The crew anchored their filming at a 900-acre ranch on Wilson Mesa outside of Telluride. While waiting for that snow in mid-February during the prolonged warming spell that plagued resorts across the state, Tarantino, Jackson and crew members held a “ski burn” — torching plywood slats shaped like skis — in hopes of spurring snowfall.

Days later, Telluride was wallowing in 2 feet of fresh snow.

The delay caused the crew to spend about $10 million more than initially budgeted, said Colorado’s film commissioner, Donald Zuckerman, whose 3-year-old film incentive program provides a 20 percent cash rebate for cinematic production spending in the state.

“They told me they were over budget $10 million, largely due to the lack of snow,” said Zuckerman, adding that the additional spending is not eligible for a rebate. “That’s good news for us. We get more bang for our buck.”

The movie’s accountants should be providing a detailed list of the production crew’s spending in Telluride in the next few weeks. Those numbers will support the estimated $5 million rebate approved by the state and based on budgeted production costs. The initial budget includes “The Hateful Eight” crew earning about $15.7 million and spending about $9.35 million for lodging and dining in Telluride and Mountain Village.

The movie is the largest film production in Colorado since 1969’s “True Grit,” starring John Wayne and filmed near Telluride in Ouray, Ridgway and Montrose.

Production outfits filmed three commercials in and around Telluride while Tarantino’s team was in town, including automaker Kia’s snowy ad featuring Pierce Brosnan driving to a remote cabin, which aired during the Super Bowl.

Reports from town show “The Hateful Eight” crew spent heavily, fueling a record winter for local restaurants, bars and hotels. One business owner made statewide news in February when the movie team got more than $140,000 worth of 200 new tires, chains and towing at his tire shop.

Telluride Tire owner Stuart Armstrong’s enthusiasm for “The Hateful Eight” has since waned.

“I’m still waiting to get paid from them,” said Armstrong, declining to elaborate further. “You caught me on not a good day. I might just tell you how I really feel about that movie being in town.”

Sales-tax receipts show significant spending spikes in Mountain Village and Telluride. While a precise portion of the surge in sales-tax revenue has not yet been linked to the movie crew, Mountain Village saw its tax receipts on shopping, dining, lodging and utilities climb to $1.67 million in the November-February span, up 24 percent from the same span the previous season.

Telluride too has seen record sales-tax revenues, furthering the box-canyon hamlet’s enviable trend of record monthly collections for 24 consecutive months.

Tax collections in town are up about 14 percent from November through February. Telluride Mayor Stu Fraser estimates about half of that increase came from “The Hateful Eight.”

Some of the spending flowed downvalley, after the crew canceled end-of-February reservations in town — before the bonfire and the blizzard.

Suddenly, hotels in Sawpit and Ridgway were filled to capacity with moviemakers.

“It wasn’t just Telluride and Mountain Village,” Fraser said. “This movie had an effect on the entire region.”

And the entire region supported “The Hateful Eight.” When producers first presented their timeline, tourism promoters in Telluride realized they would need more accommodations. They e-mailed a “wanted” poster to homeowners who had registered their vacation rentals with the town. The poster offered a reward of $2,000 to $8,000 a month for crew lodging.

“We had a really good response,” said Fraser, noting that the e-mail became yet another incentive for homeowners to register their short-term rentals with the town.

It’s important that Hollywood had a good time in Telluride, the tourism board’s Martelon said — mostly because Telluride would benefit if Hollywood sees it as a friendly place for making movies.

But also Martelon needs “The Hateful Eight” guys to allow him access to their broad spending impacts, so he can differentiate between crew spending and tourist spending.

“I’m going to have two different towns here living the good life thinking this is the new normal, but next year we are not going to have a $44 million film in our community,” Martelon said. “Things change when you don’t have that type of operation around.”

But even with the healthy jolt to what already was tracking toward a record year for Telluride and Mountain Village, the potential long-term impacts have area leaders giddy.

“Our anticipation is that we will see the benefit of this for years,” said Fraser, who e-mailed sales-tax reports to members of the Colorado legislature’s Joint Budget Committee as it weighed Gov. John Hickenlooper’s request to renew a $5 million film incentive budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The legislature eventually trimmed the program’s fiscal 2015-16 budget to $2.5 million. About $1 million of that is already promised to the “The Hateful Eight” production.

“I wish I had sent those e-mails to our legislators,” Mayor Fraser said. “This can be so important to the overall health of the economy.”

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins