This post was updated Jan. 27 at 7:50 p.m. EST
Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker Media for allegedly printing and publicizing his leaked script The Hateful Eight.
The writer of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds alleged in his suit that gossip website Gawker disseminated copies of the script and made it easily downloadable. Gawker promoted itself to the public “as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally,” Hollywood Reporter reports, and “crossed the journalistic line.”
Gawker published Tarantino’s 146-page script The Hateful Eight on its website Thursday. Tarantino said he was “very, very depressed” by the leak and announced he would shelve the project indefinitely.
Update: Gawker responded Monday to the lawsuit in a post that outlined their arguments against Tarantino’s allegations against the media company. Gawker says it had nothing to do with the links being posted online and argues the director wanted the script published. Among the six points they list: “Gawker published a link to the script because it was news.”
“Defamer covers what people in Hollywood are talking about. Thanks to Tarantino’s shrewd publicity strategy, the leak of The Hateful Eight—and the content of the script—had been widely dissected online and was a topic of heated conversation among Defamer readers,” Gawker wrote. “News of the fact that it existed on the internet advanced a story that Tarantino himself had launched, and our publication of the link was a routine and unremarkable component of our job: making people aware of news and information about which they are curious.”