Regé-Jean Page suited up for a mega-budgeted spy actioner with The Russo Brothers this year with Netflix‘s “The Gray Man.” Now, he and the Russos saddle up for another genre entirely: the TV western.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Page and “Top Gun: Maverick” star Glen Powell will star in “Butch And Sundance” for Amazon. Amazon outbid Disney+ and Peacock for the series, which they envision as the tentpole for a larger franchise with multiple spinoff series. The Russos are on board as executive producers through their AGBO studio. Plot details are slim, but “The Eternals” co-writers Kaz and Ryan Firpo will pen the series, which will take place in an alternate America, similar to Apple TV+‘s “For All Mankind” and Amazon’s “Man In The High Castle.”
So, yeah, this project isn’t a pure remake of the 1969 film with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. In fact, all the different pieces here amount to a head-scratcher. For one, who’s the ideal audience for this? The heydey of the serial TV western was approximately fifty years ago. Add in the alternate America backdrop, which ostensibly means there will be sci-fi (or at least speculative fiction) elements to the series, and this sounds more like “Cowboy & Aliens” than it does a classic or revisionist Western.
On top of that, AGBO’s Amazon series isn’t even the only Butch Cassidy-related series currently in development. Scott Steindorff and Dylan Russell‘s Stone Age TV are making a series based on Charles Leerhsen‘s book about the outlaws, “Butch Cassidy: The True Story Of An American Outlaw.” That series is still getting shopped around, but it already sounds like a more faithful rendition of the Butch Cassidy legend. So, what exactly are Amazon and AGBO thinking here? “Butch And Sundance” feels like another version of “Citadel” for Amazon, with the Russos on board and a slew of spinoff series planned. Is that what Amazon envisions as the future of streaming: massively budgeted genre shows that mimic the MCU formula?
In terms of other future projects, Page has “Dungeons & Dragons” on deck for next year. Meanwhile, “Devotion” hits theaters for Powell this November. Powell has Richard Linklater‘s “Hitman” and “Most Dangerous Game” with Zoey Deutsch on the horizon, too.
So, what exactly do Amazon and The Russo Brothers have in mind with “Butch And Sundance”? Mark this as one of the most bizarre TV announcements in recent memory.