The director is already meeting with A-list talent for the project. 
 
 Quentin Tarantino is quietly starting to put together his latest project, and is talking to A-list actors for what is promising to be a unique take on the Manson Family murders. 
 
 The project, whose title is unknown, was written by Tarantino, who would also direct. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who have produced and executive produced Tarantino's previous films, are involved, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. 
 
 WME is said to be in the early stages of shopping the project to studios to co-finance and co-distribute the venture, similar to the way Tarantino and the Weinsteins made the filmmaker's 2009 movie Inglourious Basterds, which had Universal Studios as a financial and distributing partner. 
 
 Sources say that Tarantino is putting the finishing touches on the script and that Brad Pitt, who worked with the filmmaker on Basterds, and Jennifer Lawrence have been approached. Studios could receive the package after Labor Day, according to one source. The plan is to shoot in 2018, possibly in the summer. 
 
 Script details are scant but one of the stories centers on Sharon Tate, the actress and wife of director Roman Polanski who was murdered by Manson and his followers in 1969. 
 
 Manson had ordered a group of his followers to attack the inhabitants of a house in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles, believing it was owned by a record producer who earlier had rejected him. 
 
 Over the course of several hours on the night of Aug. 8, the four followers, using guns and knives, brutally killed Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four other occupants. 
 
 In 1971, Manson and members of his crew were sentenced to life imprisonment for these and several other murders committed that summer. 
 
 If the Manson-Tate project does become Tarantino's next film, it will be his first movie based on true events. 
 
 Any talks with actors are in the early stages, and one insider said that Lawrence is not considering the Tate role. 
 
 WME had no comment. ||||| What I'm about to do is gross and wrong — to judge a work of art before it's even been made — but there's something about Quentin Tarantino tackling the Manson family murders that feels ... well, gross and wrong. 
 
 The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday reported that Tarantino's next project would be a "unique take on the Manson family murders," and that "script details are fuzzy but one of the stories centers on Sharon Tate." 
 
 Tarantino's sensibilities and true crime? These things go together like chocolate and onions. 
 
 Tate was eight months pregnant in 1969 when she and four other people were stabbed and beaten to the point of mutilation by four individuals at the direction of Charles Manson, who is still in prison for that and other grisly crimes. It ranks among the most ghastly and upsetting murders in American history, and the grief it caused still lingers. 
 
 Tate, a rising Hollywood star at the time, was married to writer/director Roman Polanski, whose Chinatown (which came out five years later, in 1974) is considered possibly the greatest film ever made. Polanski still lives in exile from the U.S. after he pleaded guilty to raping a 13-year-old, a crime he committed six years after his wife and unborn child were slaughtered. 
 
 Sharon Tate circa 1965. Image: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images 
 
 There's just a whole lot to process with this one. This is not some faded, deliciously juicy Hollywood tale for the soapy-podcast crowd to script up and dish about. Due in no small part to its sickeningly morbid nature, this is still pretty fresh in people's minds. These are the Manson murders. 
 
 And take nothing away from Tarantino, a master filmmaker. He's just the wrong guy for the job. 
 
 Tarantino made his bones fetishizing gangstery murder, torture, extortion — surrounding suffering with cheeky dialogue, burning with revenge, taking old genres and bending them into his own. He made killing seem stylish and cool. And he has a voice in the gratuity; brutality stokes his fire, blood is baked into his brimstone. Great vengeance and furious anger — it's all there. He's the best at it. 
 
 But his violence is fantasy violence. That allows for a level of human debasing that titillates, makes us feel something. Cross that over into true crime — nay, one of the most harrowing true-life tales of human debasing ever inscribed to history — and something feels deeply wrong. The motivations are not evil, but they are misguided. This whole thing makes me feel something, all right — sick to my stomach. 
 
 In a parallel universe, I'm writing that Tarantino is the perfect director for a Manson murders movie 
 
 In a parallel universe, I'm writing that Tarantino is the perfect director for a Manson murders movie. Inglourious Basterds worked precisely because it took aim at a real-life tragedy, then attacked it with machine guns, machetes and baseball bats. But we're in this darkest timeline now, and Sharon Tate and her friends were not notorious Nazis. 
 
 And no matter how far Tarantino tries to distance his script from that morbid reality, the reality will be right over there, looking at us forlornly. Five people, tied up, tortured, punched open with dozens of knife-holes, blood spattering and pooling everywhere. 
 
 What could possibly be fun about that, whether onscreen, implied or otherwise? 
 
 Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate in 1968. Image: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images 
 
 So ... does Tarantino try to handle this delicately? Obliquely? Respectfully? That's not his style at all. He couldn't do that if he tried, and no one wants that from him. They don't want Django understated, they want Django m——-f*cking unchained. 
 
 But if Tarantino leans into what he does best, and we get a slick, hard-headed, blood-soaked Manson murder gore-fest, ughhhhh. NO. Pass the Dramamine. And that's just from reading the words I just typed. 
 
 I don't want to be entertained by a cult leader's murder of five innocent people and one unborn child, and especially at the hands of a guy who would write that kind of thing into a script for shock factor — and probably do it very well. 
 
 I feel queasy enough judging art after it's made, let alone before. This is a bad hot take. And who knows? Maybe Tarantino will make a great movie. 
 
 But you know what? It'll still gonna be a bad idea. ||||| On this day in 1969, the 26-year-old actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of acclaimed movie director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown), is found murdered along with four other people at her Los Angeles home. The gruesome crime, in which the killers scrawled messages on the walls with the victims’ blood, sent Hollywood into a state of panic. The career criminal and cult leaderCharles Manson and his followers, who lived together on the outskirts of L.A. in a commune where drug use and orgies were common, were later convicted for the murders. 
 
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 Sharon Marie Tate was born January 24, 1943, in Dallas, Texas. She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue acting, eventually appearing in such films as Eye of the Devil (1966); The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967),which was directedbyPolanski; Valley of the Dolls (1967), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination; The Wrecking Crew (1969) and The Thirteen Chairs (1969). 
 
 Tate and Polanski were married in January 1968. The director was out of the country on the night of August 8, 1969, when Tate, who was due to give birth in a matter of weeks, and her friends, including the coffee heiress Abigail Folger and the celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, were shot or stabbed to death at Tate and Polanski’s rented home on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon. The Tate-Polanski home reportedly was chosen as a target because Manson had unsuccessfully attempted to get a recording deal from a producer who used to live there. Manson’s subsequent trial became a national spectacle, during which he exhibited bizarre, violent behavior. He was convicted and given the death penalty, a sentence that was commuted to life behind bars when the CaliforniaSupreme Court overturned the death penalty law in 1972. Since his trial, Manson has become a criminal icon and the subject of numerous books and films, notably the bestselling 1974 true crime book Helter Skelter, co-authored by Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles County assistant district attorney who successfully prosecuted Manson and his followers. 
 
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 In 1977, Polanski became embroiled in controversy after he pled guilty to engaging in unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl and later fled the United States to avoid a possible prison sentence. The director continued to make movies, but has not returned to America, where he could be arrested. At the 2002 Academy Awards, Polanski was awarded the Best Director Oscar in absentia for his wrenching Holocaust-era film The Pianist. ||||| Left, from The Evening Standard, right, from the Michael Ochs Archives, both from Getty Images. 
 
 Late on Tuesday news broke that the bloodthirstiest pop-culture auteur of them all, Quentin Tarantino, was circling a new project. The writer-director may stop referencing the late 60s and go full-blown groovy period piece with a sure-to-be disturbing exploration of the 1969 Manson Family murders. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino is approaching “A-list actors” like Jennifer Lawrence and Brad Pitt for the project. And while the prospect of a psychedelic bloodbath is sure to please all you Tarantino film fans out there, this is exactly the kind of story the director really should bring to TV. 
 
 In 2014, Tarantino first announced he would be retiring from directing after his tenth film. (For those of you keeping track at home, that’s just two more to go.) He has since somewhat walked back that retirement plan, but at the time, in the midst of expressing his undying love for film, he said: 
 
 If I’m gonna do TV in public, I’d rather just write one of my big scripts and do it as a miniseries for HBO, and then I don’t have the time pressure that I’m always under, and I get to actually use all the script . . . If I’m gonna do another big epic thing again, it'll probably be like a six-hour miniseries or something. 
 
 And that expanded time frame is exactly what a filmed adaptation of the Manson Family murders deserves. Anyone who listened to the stellar 2015 series on Manson via Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast, knows that in order to capture the truly disturbing environment of Charles Manson and his deranged followers, you have to track his influence over time. The slow creep of his mania and the long unraveling of his tight-knit “family” is the entire point. The way the hopeful free love movement soured into the Manson Family’s acid-fueled crime spree could never be crammed into even Tarantino’s most bloated run time. 
 
 But even if I don’t get my wish (which, I admit, was inspired by THR’s TV critic Daniel Fienberg), then the prospect of Manson—a music-obsessed fringe figure of 1960s Hollywood—through the lens of Tarantino is still alluring. Get Brad Pitt to repeat his intense, bug-eyed routine from Twelve Monkeys and you might just have the perfect cult leader. 
 
 Throw in Jennifer Lawrence as the Manson Family’s most famous victim, flaxen-haired actress Sharon Tate, and, well, who could ask for anything more? 
 
 Except time. More time for Tarantino to paint a bloody, music-drenched portrait of Los Angeles in crisis. Please, Quentin, consider HBO. 
 
 Do you have what it takes? 
 
 Test your knowledge of the Seven Kingdoms with Vanity Fair ’s Game of Unknowns. 
 
 Make your predictions ||||| 
 
 Quentin Tarantino poses with dirty hands at a hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles in 2016. (Rich Fury/Invision/AP) 
 
 Violence-and-race-obsessed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film will reportedly focus on the Manson family murders — a series of murders carried out by cult followers of Charles Manson, who believed the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” and other songs contained hidden messages about an upcoming race war between blacks and whites. 
 
 Tarantino is currently putting finishing touches on the script, which hasn’t yet been titled, and he has reportedly approached Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence for roles in the film, according to the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. 
 
 Further details, including what exactly the film’s plot might be, remain scant. One focus will be the grisly 1969 murder of actress Sharon Tate, who was married to filmmaker Roman Polanski, according to the Hollywood Reporter. 
 
 [Charles Manson returns to prison after hospitalization with serious illness, report says] 
 
 Manson followers raided Tate and Polanski’s Los Angeles home on Aug. 9, 1969. Polanksi was out of town, but the Manson family murdered Tate and four others, leaving behind a horrifying scene. 
 
 “The brutality of the killings shocked even homicide-squad detectives,” Time reported. 
 
 Blood soaked the floors, and the ceilings were riddled with bullet holes. Manson’s followers scrawled messages across the walls with the victims’ blood. Tate’s body, in particular, was a horrifying sight, as she was stabbed several times. 
 
 “The Tate-Polanski home reportedly was chosen as a target because Manson had unsuccessfully attempted to get a recording deal from a producer who used to live there,” the History channel noted. 
 
 Eventually, Manson and some of his followers were convicted in connection with these and other murders. 
 
 While many directors have tackled Manson’s story before, Tarantino’s version promises to be a “unique take,” according to Hollywood Reporter. 
 
 After all, Tarantino is known for his no-holds-barred, blood-soaked epics that blend together disparate genres. Race and unchecked violence also play a large role in his movies, making this story seem like a perfect fit. 
 
 Tarantino has tried his hand at historical movies before — one set in World War II and another during the height of American slavery — but they didn’t adhere particularly tightly to the actual history. 
 
 For example, the far-fetched ending of his World War II epic “Inglourious Basterds,” includes the deaths of many important members of the Third Reich trapped in a burning movie theater, all but ending the war. 
 
 The Manson project remains in early stages, which means there’s no guarantee it will make it to the silver screen. 
 
 A history of uncompleted films follows Tarantino, as Scott Meslow wrote in the Week. 
 
 A few examples: “Double V Vega,” which has been rumored to be a prequel or a sequel to “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs”; “Kill Bill Vol. 3 and Vol. 4,” which would be sequels to the first two installments of the “Kill Bill” franchise; “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” a remake of camp director Russ Meyer’s film of the same name; and “40 Lashes Less One,” an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s 1972 Western novel with the same name. Tarantino previously adapted Leonard’s 1992 crime novel “Rum Punch” into his film “Jackie Brown.” 
 
 Then again, his movies have a way of resurfacing even after being canceled. After an early script for “The Hateful Eight” leaked in 2014, an angry Tarantino loudly proclaimed he wasn’t making the film. 
 
 “I’m not making this next,” the director told Deadline. “I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.” 
 
 Even so, the movie came out the following year. 
 
 The director may be cautious about what project to move forward with next, given that he’s promised for years that he is only going to make 10 films before retirement. The Manson family murders movie would be his ninth, leaving only one more before his canon is completed. 
 
 Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Charles Manson was present when his followers Sharon Tate was murdered. He was not. This story has been corrected. 
 
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– Quentin Tarantino may have found his next movie, one that's already proving controversial despite scarce details. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino has written and will direct "a unique take" on the murders carried out by Charles Manson and his followers in the 1960s. Details of the script aren't clear, but the film will reportedly include the brutal Aug. 9, 1969, killings of five people, including a pregnant Sharon Tate, at the Los Angeles home she shared with her husband, Roman Polanski. Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Margot Robbie, and Samuel L. Jackson have reportedly been approached. Deadline reports Robbie is eyed to play Tate, while Pitt may take on the role of the detective investigating the murders. Filming isn't scheduled to begin until 2018, but Josh Dickey is already convinced the movie is a "disgusting idea." There will be no sensitivity from the director who "made killing seem stylish and cool," he writes at Mashable, predicting a distasteful "gore-fest." At the Washington Post, however, Travis M. Andrews notes the "no-holds-barred, blood-soaked epics" Tarantino is famous for make this pairing "seem like a perfect fit." Joanna Robinson at Vanity Fair even hopes for more than a feature film: Only a miniseries—which Tarantino has suggested he might be interested in at some point—can capture "the slow creep of [Manson's] mania and the long unraveling of his tight-knit 'family,'" Robinson writes. (One of the killers involved in the Tate murder scene was just denied parole.)