Ridley Scott is said to have his next three films lined up – it’s just it doesn’t look like one of them will be his planned western.
A couple of weeks ago, we heard that Ridley Scott’s next three projects were all lined up. Those three films weren’t named, but the general thinking was that they would be his Bee Gees biopic next, then the western that he’s often talked up (the one he’s described as “period, with a script like perfectly distilled liquor”). After that, there were reports that he would be making Bomb, a London-based dramatic thriller backed by 20th Century Studios.
An interview with costume designer Janty Yates, however, suggests that the western film may now not be in Scott’s next three films, or at the very least not in the order we suspected.
Published on Awards Daily, the interview features the reveal that the western project (which is believed to be an adaptation of the S Craig Zahler novel, Wraiths Of A Broken Land) needs snow on the ground to shoot, and the window for said snow was earlier this year.
In Yates’ own words: “it’s a film that’s not going to happen because it’s set in the snow, and it’s called Freewalkers. Basically, the snow went. By the time we prepped it, we would have been shooting in mid-summer. I don’t know what will happen. We shall see. I would love if it would happen because it’s such a gorgeous script.”
Yates suggests that the film is now not going to happen at all.
Perhaps the suspension of Gladiator 2's filming (due to last year’s strikes) and its subsequent reshoots threw out Scott’s schedule to the point where he simply wasn’t able to fit in Freewalkers. Given the rather specific nature of the weather he needs, it’s not just a case of squeezing the project in anywhere. After all, ‘You gotta know where to f—-ng put ’em’ is Scott’s mantra when it comes to cameras, and everything else we presume, including film scheduling.
We do hope he comes back to Freewalkers as, for this writer at least, it was the coolest-sounding project on Scott’s slate. When we hear more, we’ll let you know.
