Gawker Media came out fighting on Monday afternoon, in response to a lawsuit filed by Quentin Tarantino and everyone's favorite pit-bull lawyer Marty Singer. The Hollywood director accuses the gossip site of "predatory journalism" after it posted links to the leaked script to Tarantino's intended new movie The Hateful Eight.

Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino Is On The Rampage

Last week, the director, 50, had to put the kibosh on the movie - another western - after the script leaked out to agents. The whole thing got even messier when Tarantino began naming names, claiming he'd only sent out the work to Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and his number-one suspect, Bruce Dern.

Anyway, Gawker linked to the script hosted on file-sharing sites including AnonFiles and Scribd and thousands read it. Tarantino subsequently filed the lawsuit, which says that "rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that plaintiff's screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally."

Bruce DernBruce Dern Denies Leaking Tarantino's Script

In a response on the website, Gawker's editor John Cook argued quite rightly that the company did not leak the script or publish it but only posted links - however, this isn't Quentin's argument. He says that Gawker facilitated the spreading of the script (sort of right, too) in its news story.

In his post, Cook says Tarantino himself "deliberately turned the leak into a story" by phoning Mike Fleming Jr at Deadline Hollywood and ranting about the actors and agents who had betrayed him. 

Cook wraps up his post by saying Gawker posted the links "because it was news," and adding, "We'll be fighting this one."