UPDATE: I’ve just confirmed that Quentin Tarantino is talking to Brad Pitt to star… And Harvey Weinstein will produce it with Lawrence Bender…

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino has just gone out with his long-anticipated script about World War II. I hear it’s gone out to Universal, Warner Bros, Paramount, and Sony. Not only is Lawrence Bender attached to produce Inglorious Bastards, but here’s the weird thing sources are telling me: Harvey Weinstein also will be producing as well but not financing it though his The Weinstein Co wants to distribute it domestically to pocket the fee. This certainly adds fuel to those rumors that The Weinstein Co is having movie money woes. After all, one of the ways that The Weinstein Co attracted investors was by hyping its creative connection to the Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill 1 & 2 writer/director who has long made a lot of money for a lot of people. But will Harv’s investors profit from the connection? Let’s not forget that The Weinstein Co produced and financed Quentin’s last pic Grindhouse/Death Proof that tanked at the box office because of Weinstein’s own admission that he erred in releasing it in the U.S. market as half of a too-long 3-hour, 12-minute double-feature. (UPDATE: QT and Harvey Weinstein lunched very visibly at Ago on Melrose today. Just in case anyone thought they weren’t working together…)

This latest Tarantino epic, originally for Miramax and originally set for 2001, has been so long in the works that some people thought it might never see the light of day. Tarantino himself has described it as a Spaghetti Western meets World II film that’s an homage to 1967’s The Dirty Dozen and its derivative, the more extreme 1978 Italian movie Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato (released in the U.S. under the title Inglorious Bastards) about a group of soldiers on their way to be executed who get the chance of a reprieve. Tarantino’s script comes out just as the Enzo G. Castellari inspiration is heading to DVD. In a BBC documentary done around the time of Pulp Fiction‘s release, Tarantino said that he always wanted to do a “guys on a mission” film. As usual, there’s a lot of secrecy surrounding this Quentin project sent out by William Morris.