I’m one of those film fans who wants to see more Westerns. It’s one of the best genres in terms of storytelling potential, but after Dances With Wolves (Oscar for Best Picture, 1990) and Unforgiven (Oscar for Best Picture, 1992), Westerns have been virtually ignored by the major studios. While every once in a while we’ll get a winner (3:10 to Yuma, True Grit), it’s more likely that the Westerns we do get are not in the right time period (No Country For Old Men), horribly gimmicky (Jonah Hex), or gimmicky but awesome (potentially Cowboys & Aliens… I’ll let you know in my review tomorrow of what I think of it!) Still, I’ll take a good Western that’s gimmicky than no Western at all.
Harrison Ford must have gotten bit by the Western bug on the set of Cowboys & Aliens because The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Ford as signed on to play famed real-life gunslinger Wyatt Earp in a fictional film, Black Hats. Based on the novel by Max Alan Collins — who wrote the graphic novel that one of my all-time favorite films, Road to Perdition, was adapted from — Black Hats takes place in the early 1920s Los Angeles, where Earp was serving as a movie consultant (making a huge impression on a young John Wayne), private investigator, and a deputy sheriff (all that is true). Collins‘ novel takes a fictional spin on that, having Earp learn “that his friend and compatriot Doc Holliday had a son, now living in Prohibition-era New York City. While Holliday is long dead, the son has gotten himself in trouble with a rising mobster, Al Capone. Earp teams up with Bat Masterson, one of his former deputies and now noted sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph, to take on the gang in what becomes a tale of six-shooters versus tommy guns.”
I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a lot of fun and could make a great “fish out of water” action movie like Clint Eastwood‘s classic Coogan’s Bluff, another “cowboy in New York” story. Kurt Johnstad (300 and its sequel) has been selected to adapt the novel and the film will be produced by Basil Iwanyk and Jason Netter. No word on any director or other cast members yet.
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