Key Takeaways

• Django Unchained is the highest-grossing Western film, grossing nearly $450 million worldwide.
• Taylor Sheridan has revitalized the Western genre with his shows on Paramount+.
• The film features a strong cast including Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio.
• The movie will be available for streaming on Paramount+ starting December 1.

For the longest time, it was assumed that Westerns could only work at the box office if they were directed by Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers. This was before Taylor Sheridan revitalized the dormant genre with his hit shows on Paramount+. Audiences that adore the genre now have more to look forward to, because the highest-grossing Western ever made is heading to the streamer on December 1. The movie in question, Django Unchained, is over a decade old at this point, but it remains endlessly re-watchable, like most Tarantino movies. Having debuted in 2012, the film grossed nearly $450 million worldwide, establishing itself as the single biggest hit that the genre had ever seen, as well as the biggest hit of Tarantino’s career.

Django Unchained was headlined by Jamie Foxx, who played a vengeful slave on a quest to kill the evil plantation owner who killed his wife. The villain was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in a particularly nasty performance, but he was infamously snubbed at the Academy Awards. Instead, Christoph Waltz ended up winning a second Oscar for playing a dramatically different character to the one he played in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. DiCaprio would go on to win his first Oscar for Alejandro G. Iñarritu‘s The Revenant. Django Unchained also won in the Best Original Screenplay category, although Tarantino was snubbed for Best Director, while Foxx was snubbed in the Best Actor category.

Quentin Tarantino Still Hasn’t Announced His Supposed Final Feature

The film’s complicated performance during awards season could be attributed to the post-release controversy that it fueled for its depiction of racial tensions, use of racial slurs, and graphic violence — none of which, it must be said, Tarantino hadn’t been criticized for already. Spike Lee was one of the film’s most vocal critics, and he seemed to still hold a grudge against the movie and Tarantino as recently as this year, when he alluded to the violence in Django Unchained in the <em>Mr. Scorsese</em> documentary series on Apple TV. Tarantino went on to direct the movie that he describes as his favorite, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and is now busy doing everything under the sun except directing his planned final feature.

You can watch Django Unchained on Paramount+ beginning December 1, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.