Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain writing duo Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana haven’e had any movie screenplays produced since the Ang Lee flick (although they did write the mini-series Comanche Moon), which is a bit surprising considering they won about every award going for Brokeback. However they are now working on two major period Western feature films projects, according to Deadline.
McMurtry and Ossana are busy scripting The Color of Lightning for Ridley Scott to direct at 20th Century Fox (as if Scott needs another movie to add to the 10,000 he’s already attached to). Also, the duo are negotiating with Warner Bros to adapt S. C. Gwynne’s book Empire of the Summer Moon into a film that will be directed by Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper. Both projects are produced by Scott Free.
The Color of Lightning is an adaptation of the Paulette Jiles book, about Britt Johnson, a freed slave who moves his wife and three children to Texas with dreams of starting a freight business. When he’s away, a raiding party of Comanche and Kiowa kill his oldest son and take his family captive. Johnson spends a winter plotting revenge. Empire of the Summer Moon on the other hand is an epic about the great Comanche warrior Quanah, who held the westward expansion of settlers at bay for 40 years, and led to the formation of the Texas Rangers to fight against them.
So no gay cowboys in sight! However with studios currently a bit wary of westerns, especially if they seem like they might be expensive, there’s no guarantee either will be made, although if next summer’s Cowboys & Aliens is a big success, both may be able to ride an expected resugence of interest in the genre.