Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent and Eli Roth. The film tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate the Nazi Germany political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor (Laurent), and the other by a team of Jewish-American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt). The title of the film was inspired by director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 Macaroni Combat film, The Inglorious Bastards.

Development began in 1998, when Tarantino wrote the script. The director struggled with the ending and chose to hold off filming and moved on to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007 (as part of the double feature Grindhouse), Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. The film went into production in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a production budget of $70 million. Inglourious Basterds premiered on May 20, 2009 at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It was widely released in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Studios.

The film was successful at the box office, grossing $321.4 million in theaters worldwide, and therefore making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date. It received multiple awards and nominations, including eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. For his role as Hans Landa, Waltz won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.