Quentin Tarantino addresses Kanye West’s claims he stole his idea for Django Unchained

The filmmaker, 59, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and denied the rapper pitched the feature idea to him
Kanye West and Quentin Tarantino
PA/Getty
Lisa McLoughlin 28 October 2022
The Weekender

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Quentin Tarantino has esponded to Kanye West’s claims that he and Jamie Foxx stole his idea for the 2012 award-winning film Django Unchained.

Earlier this week, the rapper claimed he pitched a similar idea to the storyline of Django Unchained to Tarantino while brainstorming the music video for his song Gold Digger featuring Foxx.

Although the music video released shares no similarities to the feature film, the Donda hitmaker still claimed during his interview with Piers Morgan that the film’s plot was his idea.

In light of his comments, Tarantino appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday and addressed the furore, saying that the rapper has it wrong.

He said: “There’s not truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django and then he told that to me, and I go, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really great idea. Let me take Kanye’s idea and make ‘Django Unchained’ out of it.’ That didn’t happen.

“I’d had the idea for Django for a while before I ever met Kanye.

“He wanted to do a giant movie version of The College Dropout [West debut studio album] the way he did the album – so he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie – not video, nothing as crass as videos, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks.”

Tarantino continued: “We used it as an excuse to meet each other and so we met each other we had a really good time.

“And he did have an idea for a video. I do think it was for the Gold Digger video, that he would be a slave.

“And the whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave and he’s singing Gold Digger. And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea.”

To which Kimmel interjected: “It was a funny slave video, I mean…”

The comments come as
PA Wire

Tarantino went on to clarify: “It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything.

“And then that was also part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”

Away from his Django claims, West is currently facing a massive backlash after his recent antisemitic comments.

In the past few days, Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap, have all dropped West, 45, along with a string of other brands, following his offensive remarks.

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