Quentin Tarantino sues Gawker over Hateful Eight script leak

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is on the offensive again, this time filing a copyright lawsuit against Gawker Media for sharing the leaked script of his recent film project The Hateful Eight.

Last week, the Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained writer-director revealed he was shelving his upcoming ensemble western movie project after learning one of six people with whom he had shared an early draft of the script leaked the work in progress to a wider group within the movie industry.

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On Monday, Tarantino filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media for copyright infringement after one of its sub-sites, Defamer, posted multiple links for downloading the leaked script in a blog entry titled "Here is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script."

The director filed a copyright infringement claim in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against the anonymous users of the website anonfiles.com, which is hosting the leaked screenplay, and against Gawker Media.

"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck. This time they went too far," the lawsuit states.

"Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally.

"Gawker Media knowingly and actively acted as a promoter of copyright pirates, and, itself, did directly cause, contribute to, enable and facilitate copyright infringement,” the suit states.

Tarantino is seeking unspecified damages of more than $1 million US and an injunction to stop Gawker from continuing to link to the script.

As of Monday afternoon, the post is still available on the Defamer site.