There are some directors who perhaps shouldn’t go too commercial. James Mangold built up a great reputation with the likes of Copland, Girl Interrupted, Identity, Walk The Line and 3:10 To Yuma, but the two times he’s gone 100% mainstream, with Kate & Leopold and Knight & Day, it hasn’t turned out so well – or perhaps he just needs to avoid movie with the work ‘and’ in the title.
It’s good news then that he’s returning to the world of westerns and thrillers, where he seems to thrive, as he’s signed on to direct the revenge flick The Gunslinger, for New Regency via Warner Bros., reports THR.
Warner bought the script in May 2009 from John Hlavin, but it’s only now there’s any forward momentum, with New Regency picking it up in turnaround (there’ve been a few instances of this lately, where a studio drops a project and it then gets picked up by a company which gets its fiancing and distribution via the same studio, so that technically the studio end up making it anyway). Described as a contemporary Western, The Gunslinger centres on an ex-Texas Ranger who sets out to punish the men who killed his brother.
Regency is planning to move fast and hopes to start shooting in the spring, so expect some casting news fairly soon.