Tarantino wants to do a western, but will we ever see it?

If online buzz is any indication, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film Inglourious Basterds is making a last minute surge toward Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. With all of the critical and commercial success surrounding that movie (it’s fantastic, for those who haven’t seen it yet), fans are interested in what genre the directing wonderboy is tackling next time he steps behind the camera. Recently the New York Daily News caught up with Quentin and asked him what he’d like to do next.

I’d like to do a Western. But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let’s shine that light on ourselves. You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it A Southern.

Tarantino is infamous for talking about projects that never see the light of day, whether it be the Pulp Fiction prequel The Vega Brothers or his proposed remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! with Britney Spears attached. Even Inglourious Basterds was a project that saw years come and go between his initial announcement of the concept and it’s premiere at Cannes last year.

But as he proved with Basterds, if he puts his mind to it, he can take a film all the way from pre-production to finished product in a year’s time. So what do you think? Is this western project something that we’ll see on screen in the next year or two, or is this another we can add to the pile of unseen ideas from the auteur’s mind?