Just shows the risk you take when you become the face of an online betting company for a series of commercials.

At first sight of Samuel L. Jackson in the new trailer for Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, he seems about to start spruiking the great odds offered on a massive range of sports with that distinctive voice.

But, no, he is a mysterious stranger who wants in a ride in a stagecoach through the snow: "Got room for one more?"

Tarantino's eighth movie - the first since 2012's Django Unchained - is a post Civil War western with action, violence and black comedy.

It has already been a vexed project for Tarantino. When the script was leaked online early last year, the writer-director of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds​ declared he would not make The Hateful Eight any more and sued the blog Gawker. He planned to publish the script as a novel before changing his mind and deciding to make the movie after all.

It has eight reprobates played the likes of Jackson (The Bounty Hunter), Kurt Russell (The Hangman), Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Prisoner) and Tim Roth​ (The Little Man) holed up in a cabin during a blizzard.

There is a mystery. "One of them fellas," drawls The Hangman. "Is not what he says he is."

The trailer shows the cabin is bristling with guns.

And the Bounty Hunter is ready to use 'em. "Move a little strange," he says. "You're gonna get a bullet. Not a warnin'. Not a question. A bullet."

The candidates for that bullet in the cabin also include Demian Bichir (The Mexican), Walton Goggins​ (The Sheriff), Michael Madsen (The Cow Puncher) and Bruce Dern​ (The Confederate).

While Channing Tatum was reportedly cast - could he be The Surprise Stripper arriving at the cabin door? - he doesn't seem to be in the trailer.

For fans, it looks like Tarantino will be serving up a treat with The Hateful Eight being released on "glorious 70mm" - the wide format that once showed the best of such epics as Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia - on Christmas Day in North America followed by digital cinemas on January 8. In Australia, the release date is still to be set.