Renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is said to be eyeing on Elmore Leonard's western fiction masterpiece "Forty Lashes Less One" as his next small screen project. As per Cinema Blend, the film director wants to make a miniseries inspired by the 1972 tome. In fact, in the official Elmore Leonard website, he revealed back in 2007 that he already had 20 pages of script laid out.

The film producer owns the right to the book and, during an interview with Premiere magazine, Tarantino remarked that "the time may have come to tackle it." In fact, he already has a clear vision for the book, which is a four to six-episode miniseries.

Indie Wire noted that Tarantino is a big fan of Leonard's work having adapted the author's book "Rum Punch" for the big screen making it the 1997 Pam Grier-starrer "Jackie Brown" so it wouldn't be a surprise if "Forty Lashes Less One" will be given the series treatment too.

Tarantino seems to like to have a thing for the Western too with films like "Django Unchained" and the forthcoming "The Hateful Eight" in his credits. Leonard's tome has tons of room for violence and bloodbath, which is right up the filmmaker's alley. He will also get the chance to deal with racial issues with it.

"Forty Lashes Less One" follows two enemies-to-friends prisoners who aim to get out of the hellish Yuma Prison, which "can destroy the soul of any man," as the synopsis of the book teases. Sentenced to rot behind bars, the "hard and hated inmates" race to find hope in the unlikeliest place even if it means dealing with "a mad and violent contest ... on a bloody trail that winds toward Arizona's five most dangerous men."

It remains to be seen if "Forty Lashes Less One" will end up in the small screen. Slash Film warned that Tarantino has spoken about a lot of cool projects he wanted to tackle but did not end up bearing any fruit. "Kill Bill Vol. 3" is one of those he gushed about but never materialized.

This is why fans of Leonard and Tarantino are advised to hold their horses until concrete action or development takes place. In fact, even if the miniseries pushes through, Cinema Blend reminds that there will be an exhaustive process to go through before the pitch makes it out into the open.

At the moment, the possibility of Elmore's "Forty Lashes Less One" becoming Tarantino's latest project hangs in the balance.