It’s been both a year since a new Clint Eastwood movie arrived and a year since we’ve heard what the 90-year-old Hollywood legend may tackle next, which is a rarity in his prolific career. Assumedly taking a bit of a break post-Richard Jewell until productions could prepare for COVID-19 protocols, Eastwood has now announced what he hopes to begin shooting next.
Deadline reports he’s already scouting locations for Cry Macho, a film he’ll direct, star in, and produce for Warner Bros. pending an official green light. A long-gestating project in Hollywood, the script was penned by Nick Schenk (The Mule, Gran Torino) along with N. Richard Nash, who wrote the original novel in 1975 and passed away at the age of 87 in 200.
His first leading role since The Mule, Eastwood will star in the adventure drama as a “onetime rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder who, in 1978, takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man’s young son home and away from his alcoholic mom. Crossing rural Mexico on their back way to Texas, the unlikely pair faces an unexpectedly challenging journey, during which the world-weary horseman may find his own sense of redemption through teaching the boy what it means to be a good man.”
Eastwood has long ties with the project, even considering directing it back in the 1980s before working on The Dead Pool instead. It then nearly got made early in the 2010s with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead and Brad Furman directing, but then fell apart at the last minute. With Eastwood back on the saddle, one can certainly expect it to arrive by next year.