A few months back, John Hillcoat’s much-anticipated, potentially star-studded Prohibition epic The Promised Land, starring Ryan Gosling, Shia LeBeouf and Amy Adams from a screenplay by the ever-talented Nick Cave, fell apart without funding. This caused Hillcoat to spout out some sad, well-deserved opinions about the state of the film industry.
Now, it looks as though the director has returned from the brink, to deliver more standard fare, i.e. a revenge action flick starring Christian Bale. The project is an adaptation of The Revenant, a 2003 novel by Michael Punke, written for the screen by Mark L. Smith (Vacancy, The Hole 3D). [The Playlist]
Here’s a synopsis of the novel via CHUD:
The revenge comes when frontiersman Bale (this is the late 1800s) gets left for dead by his buddies after a savage bear mauling. Despite taking wounds that should have killed him, Bale’s character – Hugh Glass – struggles through the wilderness to hunt down the men who left him to die.
I guess it being a PERIOD revenge piece makes it a bit more intriguing. It oddly sounds a bit like Ravenous, the beautifully violent, darkly comedic film about cannibals during the American Civil War. Coincidentally enough, Guy Pearce, the star of Hillcoat’s debut Australian Western The Proposition, starred in Ravenous as well.
Bale, and Hillcoat, are very good at minimalist intensity, making them a dream team in the making for a film like this. More news to come.
Would you pay to see The Revenant?