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Django Unchained

2012 film by Quentin Tarantino

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ571032
Source-derived summary

Django Unchained ( JANG-goh) is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Tarantino's A Band Apart and Columbia Pictures, it stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson with Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. The film, set in the Antebellum South and Old West, follows the story of an enslaved man who trains under a German bounty hunter with the ultimate goal of reuniting with his wife.

The film is a highly stylized, revisionist tribute to spaghetti Westerns, with its title referring particularly to the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci. Development of Django Unchained began in 2007, when Tarantino was writing a book on Corbucci. By April 2011, Tarantino sent his final draft of the script to the Weinstein Company (TWC). Casting began in the summer of 2011, with Michael K. Williams and Will Smith being considered for the role of the title character before Foxx was cast. Principal photography took place from November 2011 to March 2012 in California, Wyoming, and Louisiana, on a $100 million budget.

Django Unchained premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on December 11, 2012, and was theatrically released by TWC on December 25, in the United States, with Columbia Pictures (through Sony Pictures Releasing International) handling international distribution. It was a commercial success, grossing $449 million worldwide, becoming Tarantino's highest-grossing film, as well as the highest-grossing Western film of all time.

Editorial summary

“Django Unchained” enters the record as 2012 film by Quentin Tarantino. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Django, Unchained and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 1966, 2007, 2011—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2012-12-25, 2013-01-17—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Django, Unchained and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Django Unchained” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Django, Unchained and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q571032. VIAF identifies the subject as 305924973. The Library of Congress control number is no2013010256. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 1966, 2007 and 2011.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Django Unchained”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Django Unchained primary sources, Django Unchained archive and Django research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Django Unchained”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Django Unchained” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.