First of all, I have to say that, reading your question, I don't think your level of knowledge and experience at this time will be enough for this project. It is quite an advanced level project that will require significant electronics and software development.
If it were my project, I would think about using a 74hc595 shift register to connect to the D0-7 pins. The serial register would also be connected to the esp's SPI pins. This would allow quite a fast data transfer from the esp to the display. I once connected a 128x64 monochrome LCD display to an esp8266 this way. Modifications were needed to the library used to draw on the display.