Yep, Jamie Foxx is Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained!

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Idris Elba fans hoping to see the actor get his big break will have their way — it will just be in Guillermo del Toro’s monster/robot clash PACIFIC RIM, and not Quentin Tarantino’s slave epic DJANGO UNCHAINED, as previously buzzed.

It’s been rumored for a couple of weeks now, but Deadline says QT has officially selected Jamie Foxx for his Django after reportedly considering Elba and unsuccessfully pursuing Will Smith for the potentially controversial spaghetti Western.

Foxx obviously has some chops, and apparently the Oscar-winner can already ride a horse, so he’s got a head start (though I wonder how QT will handle that weird Chia hairline Foxx is now sporting , which would be anachronistically neat — Jules’ wig, maybe?).

The story is set in the pre-Civil War South, and follows a slave named Django who is freed by a German bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz, in another meaty QT part). Schultz takes the free man under his wing and trains him in weapons and deception, assisting his violent quest to be reunited with still-enslaved love Broomhilda.

Leonardo DiCaprio will play the film’s villain, plantation owner Calvin Candie, with Samuel L. Jackson as his manipulative house servant. The Weinstein/Sony production will hit screens on December 25, 2012.