The official trailer at the bottom of the page should give you a glimpse into what Mel Gibson now has his hands on according to Mike Fleming Jr.’s exclusive at Deadline. Indeed, he will executive produce and direct a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 American Western epic, The Wild Bunch, which he will also write with screenwriter Bryan Bagby.
The original film penned by Peckinpah and co-scribe Walon Green hit the marquee in its heyday as a controversially violent film. To date, it is considered a stylishly memorable classic among many that not only set the gold standard for much of Hollywood action cinema in the decades that followed, and directors therein. The film now sits at home at American Film Institute among 100 greatest American Films of all time, as well as in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Receiving two Academy Award nominations, this bitter, brutal story of magnificent losers in a dying West remains one of the screen’s all-time classics. An explosive adventure drama about the last of the legendary lawless breed who lived to kill — and killed to live.
The news comes as Gibson has apparently made a name for himself with films like The Passion Of The Christ, Apocalypto, and Hacksaw Ridge; The former was especially controversial for the consternation it drew among certain audiences. Apart from this and considering Gibson himself is no stranger to westerns and stylish violent action of the sort, a Peckinpah classic like this would be right up his alley.
A production start date remains pending while his current work on WWII movie, Destroyer, remains in financing stages.
Gibson will next appear in S. Craig Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete this November, followed by Joe Carnahan’s Boss Level next year.
Peep the trailer for the original 1969 release of The Wild Bunch below!
