There’s a bit of a Big Lebowski reunion in the works, with Variety reporting that Jeff Bridges is in talks to play the lead role in the Coen Brothers’ remake of the classic John Wayne western, True Grit. Although normally we’d be a bit dubious about anyone taking on a classic like True Grit, the pairing of the Coens and Bridges means there are few people you would expect to do a better job of bringing the story back to the screen.
The original film, which won Wayne his only Oscar, is about aging Wild West US marshall Rooster Cogburn, who is hired by a 14-year-old girl and goes with her and a couple of other men on a mission of justice, which involves tracking down the man who killed the girl’s father, travelling deep into dangerous Indian territory to find their man. While the original told everything from Cogburn’s perspective, the Coen’s version will tell the story from the viewpoint of the girl, and will apparently be more faithful to the Charles Portis novel that the 1969 movie was based on.
It may not be The Big Loebowski 2, but any collaboration between the Coens and Bridges has to be good news, and it’s even better that it’s a western. It’s a genre that would seem to be perfect territory for the directors, and while they’ve skirted it before with No Country, they’ve never actually jumped right into the Wild West, Plus, we’d be prepared to watch anything with Bridges being gruff and wearing a stetson, but we’re just weird that way.