Oscar-nominated actor Ethan Hawke (Boyhood) is currently in talks to join the ranks of Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy, The LEGO Movie) and Denzel Washington in the newest remake of The Magnificent Seven.
Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) has been casting his net in familiar waters for the upcoming film, recruiting actors who have collaborated with him on previous projects. This will be a reunion for both Hawke and Washington, who starred together in Fuqua’s Training Day (2001); Haley Bennett will team up with Washington again as well, after working on Fuqua’s most recent crime thriller The Equalizer (2014).
This will be the third remake of the epic western tale, the first being Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, and the second the 1960 American film version The Magnificent Seven, starring Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. MGM, the studio responsible for the 1960 remake, will produce the new movie, although a release date has not yet been slated.
Like its predecessors, The Magnificent Seven remake will revolve around a poverty-stricken town in need of protection – though this story will take place during the aftermath of the Civil War. This upcoming version of the western, re-adapted by True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto with additional work by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Snow White and the Hunstsman), will center around a series of events sparked by the wife of a wrongly murdered man. Fed up with a local gold mining baron bullying her town, the widow (played by Bennett) hires an expert gunman (Washington) to seek justice for her husband’s death; eventually he rounds up 6 more gunmen to complete his quest.
Although Hawke, a native Texan, has an extensive film resumé ranging from drama to crime, romance, and action, The Magnificent Seven will mark only the second western for the actor, the first being the recently completed In Valley Of Violence (also starring John Travolta, due in theaters December 2015).
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