We’ve been super excited about the potential of Wes Anderson finally getting the chance to dabble with the Western genre with a cowboy flick (something he’s been talking up for ages; his interview with The Playlist back in 2014 for “The Grand Budapest Hotel” touched upon this) that is apparently coming together after being a dream project for the Texas-born filmmaker. Bill Murray and his other longtime collaborators, The Wilson Brothers (Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson), are said to be leading the untitled Western project, something that we have long assumed Anderson has been trying to get going since the days of his first big feature effort, “Bottle Rocket,” which starred the acting siblings alongside the late James Cann (“Thief”).
“We will do a Western, you know. I think,” Anderson teased at a Cinema Paradiso event (via Variety) from last week held at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. “For many years, we’ve talked about doing a Western. Owen and Luke Wilson, I think, will be a part of that… They’re from Texas, too, and I think it’s our destiny.”
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Also in attendance was Murray, who spoke up about his desire to be part of it. “The movie I want to make is a cowboy movie, because he’s (Anderson) from Texas, and I feel he owes the world a cowboy movie. That’s why I’ve started walking like this,” he added, while “adopting a Western gait” for the crowd to witness.
Luke, who recently was part of the cast of Kevin Costner‘s “Horizon: An American Saga,” also talked to us back in 2021 and briefly mentioned the Western project: ‘We’ve talked over the years about the possibility of maybe doing a western with the old group. So, that would be really incredible. And I’d be just like anybody else – just to see Wes’ take on a Western would be incredible.”
More recently, we’ve seen Wes Anderson wade into the waters of more specific genre projects with his sci-fi pic “Asteroid City” (it featured a cute stop-motion space alien) and the espionage flick “The Phoenician Scheme.” It certainly feels like getting a shot to make his Western will be a bucket list story that he’s admittedly trying to tell for a VERY long time. Nearly every Anderson feels like it could be a Western or at least has some elements (“Bottle Rocket” had always felt like it could have been made as one) that could be carried over, so his auteur aesthetic is going to fit like a glove, in our opinion.
Until we learn more about the project, we’ll just have to be patient, but what we’d likely expect to see is some of Anderson’s regulars (folks like Jason Schwartzman and Willem Dafoe joining the project feels like a good bet to make) taking roles alongside newbies.
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