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EXCLUSIVE: Deadline revealed this morning that Ridley Scott was returning to his sci-fi classic Blade Runner. His Scott Free partner and brother Tony Scott is also getting serious about a new version of a movie classic. Scott is in talks with Warner Bros to direct a reboot of the 1969 Sam Peckinpah-directed The Wild Bunch. This film becomes one of three or so that Scott is most eager to direct as his follow-up to the Denzel Washington-Chris Pine action film Unstoppable.
Scott’s next assignment will be Hell’s Angels, though its timing will depend on whether he gets the actor he wants to play gang leader Sonny Barger. I’m told that he wants Jeff Bridges. They’ve not met face to face yet, because Bridges is right now touring his self-titled musical album that he recorded after he won the Oscar playing Bad Blake in Crazy Heart. Once Bridges gets back to film work, he’s booked to star with Ryan Reynolds in Universal’s R.I.P.D. and Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures’ The Seventh Son. If Scott has his heart set on Bridges and the actor says yes, Hell’s Angels won’t get underway until next spring or later. Fox 2000′s Hell’s Angels is set around the Laughlin riots of 2001 when the Angels were caught up in a war with rival gang The Mongols. The drama revolves around a friendship that develops between Barger and a young drifter mechanic with a gift for fixing motorcycles. The script is in by Scott Frank, who did numerous rewrites of an earlier draft by Stephen Gaghan.
Scott is also making a high priority of the reinvention of his 1986 Tom Cruise hit Top Gun. I’m not sure where this leaves the remake of Potzdamer Platz and an adaptation of the John Grisham novel The Associate, two films that were on Scott’s front burner.
The original The Wild Bunch was about an aging group of outlaws that try for one last score on the Texas-Mexico border in 1913, as the Old West changes around them. The original starred William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Warren Oates. The studio has tried for years to get this going, once getting a script from Training Day‘s David Ayer. It’s early days on the project, but Scott and producer Jerry Weintraub have a take for the movie and Brian Helgeland will draft it. Scott is repped by CAA.
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I was just thinking that the original ‘The Wild Bunch’ just wasn’t classic enough. Hollywood, you are killing me.
Oh, man, I can’t wait for the super-fast cutting and thin characterization!
Oh, incidentally, does anyone know where Tony’s going to find any American actors who are actually old enough to play the roles originally filled by William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, and Warren Oates? Everyone of that stature and age acting today has chopped their faces up so they “resemble” being 30. An entire generation has made themselves irrelevant for playing the elderly.
This is hollywood we’re talking about. It’ll be the 2nd and 3rd leads from Twilight, Zac Efron, Blake Lively (for no good reason), the guy from the new Footloose and Tobey McGuire as Deke.
That is so true! Chop chop and chizzle chizzle is what all these actors have been doing to keep there youthful look so their faces are now distorted. Gee Tony, How ya gonna get that weathered cowboy look and where in the hell you gonna find a and only Strother Martin not to mention a one and only cast…WTF?
Well, I’m curious, REAL curious to what you can do. This must have been a real doozy of a Martini Lunch and somehow it got a smashing result! Actually, quite brilliant!
So, The editing was impecable, of course…Lou Lombardo!
Tony, You have some shoes to fill- you up for it?
The Scott Bros… dumb and dumber.
Mickey Rourke playing the God of the hells angels would be a perfect part for Mickey. Mickey Rourke’s real fighter training would be perfect the scenes with Mickey slapping around Sonny barger and the rest of the hells angels that talked out of place at meetings or Mickey beating on hells angels that broke the gangs rules.
I so agree. It’s sheer lunacy to remake a classic.
I remember when I told Redford almost 3 years ago that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were considering a remake of Butch Cassidy.
He looked at me puzzled and upset and said, “why, you can’t improve on perfection”.
Great, just great. What we’re are waiting for… a Wild Bunch remake. Just watch the backlash on this.
Man, even western fans won’t go to this. Did Scott learn nothing from his unnecessary and unwanted PELHAM remake?
What about the 24 movie? Wasn’t Scott spearheading that with the intention of directing? What IS the story with that movie, anyway? Will it ever be happening?
If a competent director were re-doing Wild Bunch, that would be bad enough. But for the director in question to be Tony Scott … that’s just a vulgarity.
Instead of the time bending montages that gives the action serious and horrifying emotional impact we’re going to get a lot of shiny things and jerky camerawork.
Damn it Hollywood, you’ve already hit bottom. QUIT DIGGING!!
Don’t forget 3D, “D”!
how in the fuck.
where the fuck.
why in the fuck.
what the FUCK.
- Sam Peckinpah
Spot on my man… only lunatics would try to make a re-make of such a classic by all standards..
Seriously? Between these two prolific directors out of their next 6 films only one is going to be remotely original and not a remake / reconception. What is going on?
Bummer. I like Scott, and honestly, I’m not automatically opposed to remakes. But literally every other project these days is a “reboot,” re-imagining,” “re-conception,” whatever – and it’s just… a bummer.
I hate to say it but I’ve stopped going. I realize every now and then you get a Carpenter’s The Thing or Cronenberg’s The Fly, but those were remakes from a different time and a different direction. There is something far more cynical about this and the dozens of other “re-imaginings” this town has vomited into theaters of late.
Seriously, it’s getting old.
Unless we’re talking a remake in the sense of Red Harvest > Yojimbo > A Fistful of Dollars, then the general public will not be interested. Those familiar with the material will never believe the original can be topped, and those unfamiliar don’t like Westerns, or they’d know the fuckin’ title!
Be creative – truly, originally, organically creative with this – or don’t bother. In today’s market it’s an uphill battle enough just by being a Western.
Wait, is this just happening because True Grit was successful?
“Say, they remade True Grit and made bundles, what properties do we own? Wild Bunch? That had horses and shit, right? Get me fucking Tony Scott!”
Jesus.
I’m with John Waters. He said we shouldn’t be remaking the good movies, we should be remaking the bad ones instead, because they need it. Remaking The Wild Bunch is pure laziness.
Thank God his brother wouldn’t stoop to this level. Could you imagine something as odious as a BLADE RUNNER remake?
I think civilization as we know it has come to an end.
His brother is going to remake BLADE RUNNER. Tony wants to re-do TOP GUN, then try an top THE WILD BUNCH.
I am still waiting for someone to remake THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM & EVE.
I give up. Thank God for Turner Classic Movies.
ARGH!
It’s not a *reboot*, it is a *remake*.
Remake = Remaking a movie
Reboot = Making a new film in a thriving franchise of films that ignores the previous film’s continuity
It’s all the same.
Thank you. That’s been driving me crazy, too.
Gee, so who is Tony going to cast in the William Holden part? Russell Crowe? Peckinpah is turning over in his grave.
Not enough testosterone in all of Hollywood to remake The Wild Bunch.
As to terms: maybe they should get with the times and start calling them “mash-ups”.
Ugh. Lot’s of originality out there these days…
Remake “The Wild Bunch”? What an absurd idea. Goes right along with the shot-by-shot remake of “Psycho” done a few years ago. $25 mil of Universal’s money down the drain. With all due respect of current talent, you’ll never duplicate the cast. “Bunch” is regarded as a seminal film; by which all others are judged. I.E., watch “Citizen Kane,” then take a piss, have a drink, move a little further back and let “Bunch” engulf you. Peckinpah was inspired by NFL, (National Football League) films in both editing and speed. The technique fit the venue, the situation and the characters perfectly which gave rise to proper pacing of the story. That is why “The Wild Bunch” is a true work of art. It is also the great metaphor for Vietnam – American outlaws entering a foreign country involved in a civil war. In the interests of everything that is holy, including not wasting money, I urge Warners to get a copy of the original 3 hour 10 minute version from the Peckinpah family, tell the censors to kiss off, make sure that the bandage is on Freddy Sykes’ (Edmond O’Brien) right leg, and reissue the original vision. If you don’t believe me, ask Quentin Tarantino or Kathryn Bigelow. Stuart Newcomb
Yes, yes yes. If you have a beautiful film like The Wild Bunch sitting in the vaults, re-release that sucker. I would actually go to a theater to see that on a big screen again.
When in the H*LL are Hollywood “Directors” going to grow some B*LLS and develop “Original Westerns” and not remakes (“3:10 to Yuma”, “True Grit”, now “Wild Bunch” and before that “Maverick” and gawdawful “The Wild, Wild, West”)! I know of at least 4 scripts that are (still) circulating between Studios, Production Co.s and Agencies that are being, in effect, “sat on” because everyone is….AFRAID! Afraid because of the costs for “Cowboys & Aliens” and the recently stopped, production cost toxic “Lone Ranger” (believed to have “Alien elements” in the script and the star now is….Tonto not the Lone Ranger! Why not just call it….TONTO, keemo sabe?). God Help U.S. All!
I mean…am I dreaming? In what world is this a good idea?
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY??????
Hollywood is BRAIN DEAD. I give up already. I’d rather spend my life watching YouTube cats than the B.S. the ten year-old executives in Hollywood consider great ideas.
“Hey, dude, check out this movie I found in my dad’s video library. It’s called The Wild Bunch. It has all this cool slow motion and stuff. Just think what we could do with CGI. We could make it TWICE as bloody!
Further reasoning as to why I haven’t been to an adult movie since Dances With Wolves. At least I can take my kids to original Pixar movies.
“I’m with John Waters”
I believe it was John Huston who said it.
And yes, WTF…
Could have sworn I heard Waters say this on the radio some years ago. Maybe he was quoting Huston. Either way, they’re both right.
all the others posting above me have said what needs to be said about the LAZINESS and CYNICISM of re-making, re-booting whatever the fuck you wanna call it…of The Wild Bunch
i’m past the stage of being truly pissed off about the current state of hollywood and now just pretty sad of what cinema has become–it’s become a GOD DAMN PUTRID DIRTY FUCKIN TOILET is what it has become
hey–why not just “re-imagine” The Godfather or Casablanca then? and hey can we get eli roth to direct a “re-imagining” of citizen kane, that’ll be just swell!
for many cinephiles like me, the DESTRUCTION of the dream factory is actually pretty sad..remaking the fuckin Wild Bunch—HAVE YOU NO FUCKIN SHAME PEOPLE!
I was fortunate to see the film in New York the evening it opened. The audience was completely blown away. That night they chopped a lot of the film to pieces and the original cut wasn’t seen for many years. The politics of the film came directly from Peckinpah and his family’s history in the West. The film is full of racism, sexism, ultra violence, anti- religion, completely subversive. I can’t imagine the Sacre riots in Paris superceding the critical reception of THE WILD BUNCH and the genteel New York critics of the time. FIlmmaking and the Western Form were changed in an instant. Each actor gave the performance of their lives. If film can be called an art form, THE WILD BUNCH is an example. The feeling from the audience that evening was shock and awe. I’ve heard that many had to leave the theatre because of the unexpected level of violence but I’ll never forget that evening and even in its truncated form the film had extraordinary power because of Peckinpah’s uncompromising vision. Robert Ryan and William Holden had a perfect world- weary quality and were interchangeable. This film cannot be remade.
I saw THE WILD BUNCH on a week night in July ’69 across the street from South Coast Plaza, Orange county, California. The theater was full of adults. The first half of the double bill was John Wayne’s GREEN BARETS. Having been through basic training – an experience that Wayne missed – pointed out the silliness of Wayne’s presentation, standing up in a hail of bullets while everybody else would be digging a trench with their nose. Also I was a friend of Don Duncan, one of the original Green Berets. And then came THE WILD BUNCH. Visuals strong enough to remember that 25 years later on the reissue I realized what was missing due to the re-rating.
I’m not against a BLADE RUNNER prequel or sequel if Ridley Scott is directing. It’s his movie… classic or not. I guess the same goes for Tony and TOP GUN. But they should keep their f*cking hands off of THE WILD BUNCH.
You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me???? Re boot THE WILD BUNCH???
What the f*ck is going on here???
I love Scott’s work. Really do.
But…you just don’t touch a classic like this.
There’s nothing, absolutely nothing Scott and any writer out there can do to make this better. Nothing.
You want to make a real classic Tony? Take a chance on finding an unrepped, unknown writer who’s got their craft down. And do an original. An original spec with dark, very flawed characters in a violent world wrestling with consciences they never knew they had. Who are also willing to give their lives up in the end for something / someone better than they are. You don’t have to re boot THE WILD BUNCH. Just go outside the comfort box of the standard Hollywood Studios’ and Agents’ system.
I shouldn’t even have to bring this up.
It’s not enough to remake old movies…
Now you have to remake YOUR OWN MOVIES.
Wow…