‹ First 10 Minutes of Sex Drive •
Quentin Tarantino’s WWII movie Inglourious Basterds, weird spelling and all, has started production in Germany. The Weinsten Company has issued a press release announcing the beginning of filming, and photos are starting to come out. In case you haven’t been keeping up, Inglourious Basterds is based on a 1978 Italian movie of the same name (though in that case it was spelled correctly). It follows a group of Jewish-American soldiers who specialize in targeted assaults on Nazi leaders and a French woman who sees her family brutally murdered by the Nazis. It’s slated to come out sometime next year, though no official release date has been set.
Brad Pitt stars with a cast of people that aren’t necessarily stars, but should be familiar faces to most movie goers. The first picture to come out of the production is of Pitt looking every bit the part of heroic WWII soldier:
Here’s the Weistein Company’s complete release, full of interesting details.
Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (sic) began principal photography last week on location in Germany. The ensemble cast of Inglourious Basterds includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Paul Rust, Michael Bacall, Omar Doom, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Jacky Ido, August Diehl, Martin Wuttke, Richard Sammel, Christian Berkel, Sönke Möhring, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Denis Menochet and Cloris Leachman.
Inglourious Basterds reunites Tarantino with Academy Award-nominated editor Sally Menke, Academy Award-winning director of photography Bob Richardson, and production designer David Wasco. Joining Tarantino for the first time is Academy Award-nominated costume designer Anna Sheppard.
Academy Award-nominee Lawrence Bender is producing Inglourious Basterds. Erica Steinberg and Lloyd Phillips, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein are the film’s executive producers. The co-producers are Charlie Woebcken, Christoph Fisser and Henning Molfenter. Pilar Savone is the associate producer.
The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures, through its newly formed International Studio, are co-financing and co-presenting the film with TWC handling domestic distribution and Universal handling international distribution. The two companies are partners on the project.
Zehnte Babelsberg Film, a subsidiary of Studio Babelsberg AG, is producing Inglourious Basterds. The film will shoot at Studio Babelsberg as well as in Berlin, Saxony and Paris.
Inglourious Basterds begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema.
Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own…
Inglourious Basterds will be released worldwide in 2009.
