Tarantino spoke about adapting Forty Lashes Less One for television, but his statement described a possibility of four or six hours. The novel and the audiovisual project must be kept as distinct works.
A prison novel within the western genre
Forty Lashes Less One is an Elmore Leonard novel published in 1972. Its story is set in Yuma Territorial Prison and brings together Harold Jackson, a former Black soldier, and Raymond San Carlos, a Chiricahua Apache. The two men endure hostility that combines confinement and racism, and move from enmity to a necessary alliance in search of a chance at freedom.
The work’s official presentation places the action in 1909, at a later point than the western’s more usual image. That setting allows the genre to shift towards institutions, rules and forms of control that coexist with frontier violence. The open landscape is still there, but the protagonists begin bound by a space that restricts every movement.
The relationship between the two offers a strong dramatic core. Sharing a situation of exclusion does not mean trusting another person straight away. The alliance needs to work through rivalries and recognise common interests. That transformation allows the story to examine co-operation as a practical decision, built under pressure, rather than presenting it as an automatic affinity.
The novel is a published work that can be read on its own. Tarantino’s later interest adds a possible adaptation history, but does not make it one of his scripts or allow the characters to be attributed to him. Leonard is the author of that world and its conflicts. The distinction is especially important when an unmade project ends up better known by the filmmaker’s name than by the book that comes before it.
The 2015 statement: four or six hours
In December 2015, during promotion for The Hateful Eight, Tarantino explained to Première that he owned the rights to Forty Lashes Less One and had long wanted to adapt it. He suggested that it could become his third western and imagined it for television as a four- or six-hour miniseries. The three-hour figure does not match that statement.
The wording was conditional. The director was talking about an intention and a format he was considering, without announcing a broadcaster, a final cast or a start date for filming. The difference between owning rights and producing an adaptation is substantial: rights allow the material to be developed, but do not guarantee that all the steps needed to film it will actually be completed.
The longer format could have provided time to develop the relationship between the prisoners and the different forces that shape the institution. That possibility fits a story in which coexistence and the transformation of an alliance matter as much as the final goal. However, that reading does not show how Tarantino would have divided the episodes or which scenes he might have added or cut.
The interview also placed the project within a working method in which the director imagines sequels and alternative paths before choosing something else. That context helps to read the announcement with its real level of commitment. An idea expressed with enthusiasm can be meaningful and yet remain for years without becoming a production.
The affinity with Leonard and the project’s limits
The influence of Elmore Leonard on Tarantino has a broader basis than this adaptation. Attention to how characters speak, the blend of humour and threat, and the practical interests that drive a conversation all offer recognisable affinities. In a prison story, those qualities can become especially powerful because words make negotiation possible within a space where almost everything is restricted.
Jackson and San Carlos also introduce a conflict between the classification imposed on them by the institution and the capacities they develop in response. Confinement can turn them into categories before they are heard as individuals. The relationship between them allows the story to explore an identity built through action and co-operation. That dimension helps explain why the material could interest a director attentive to underappreciated characters.
The resemblance to themes in Django or The Hateful Eight does not mean those films are disguised adaptations of the novel. A thematic affinity must be distinguished from a production relationship or a specific transfer of scenes. The announced project was to adapt the book; comparisons with released films are useful for analysing interests, not for inventing a textual genealogy.
The television format would have required a specific organisation of time: dividing a novel into instalments means deciding interruptions, progression and points of view, decisions that the statement of intent does not spell out.
Forty Lashes Less One remains an available novel and a discussed adaptation without confirmed completion. The solid information allows us to identify Leonard, the premise of the two prisoners and the television proposal formulated in 2015. Keeping those elements separate preserves the project’s interest and avoids presenting as an existing miniseries what was a possible line of work described by Tarantino.
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