‘The White Lotus’ Fred Hechinger Joins Nicholas Cage in Gabe Polsky Western ‘Butcher’s Crossing’

Fred Hechinger, who had his breakout role in HBO’s popular dark comedy series The White Lotus, has been cast as the lead opposite Nicholas Cage in Gabe Polsky’s Western Butcher’s Crossing, based on John Williams’ 1960 novel of the same name. Deadline confirmed the news.

In the film by Polsky and Liam Satre-Meloy, Hechinger will portray Will Andrews, a naïve Harvard student who travels west in 1874 to achieve his ambition of seeing the nation and living off the land. Will decides to bankroll a risky, but possibly lucrative trip to Colorado headed by Miller (Cage), a seasoned hunter obsessed with a near-mythological buffalo herd he once saw in the Rockies. Miller’s single-minded determination to murder every buffalo in the massive herd puts Will and the rest of the hunting group in danger of losing their sanity and lives as the weeks and months pass.

Among starring in the series The White Lotus, Hechinger also starred in Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy and another Netflix film, The Woman in the Window. Next, he’ll be featured as Seth Warshavsky in Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, a Tommy Lee-Pamela Anderson miniseries.

Butcher’s Crossing is currently filming in Montana; no other cast members have been announced to have joined the film yet.