Tommy Lee Jones’s directing career has been sporadic. He made the TV movie Good Old Boys in 1995, then didn’t make another film until The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in 2005. There was a six year gap until his HBO flick The Sunset Limited, and now he’s got The Homesman in post-production.
It seems he wants to helm another film fairly quickly, as Variety reports that Jones is developing a remake of The Cowboys. The 1972 flick was on of John Wayne’s final movies, who starred alongside Bruce Dern and Western stalwart Slim Pickens.
The movie is about ‘a rancher who is forced to train a group of boys and get a herd to market on time to avoid financial ruin after his cattle drivers leave to look for gold’. There’s no news on exactly what direction Jones will take with the movie or indeed if he’s thinking of starring.