Michael Keaton will feature behind and in front of the camera for Rode To Ruin which will also star Morgan Freeman. More on the project below. Michael Keaton’s latest film, The Whisper Man, has just debuted on Netflix, but the Beetlejuice actor is already gazing ahead and this time, in the director’s chair. That’s right, ... Rode To Ruin | Michael Keaton directing and starring in new western with Morgan Freeman
Michael Keaton will feature behind and in front of the camera for Rode To Ruin which will also star Morgan Freeman. More on the project below.
Michael Keaton’s latest film, The Whisper Man, has just debuted on Netflix, but the Beetlejuice actor is already gazing ahead and this time, in the director’s chair.
That’s right, Deadline is reporting that Keaton will be directing Rode To Ruin, a new western written by R. Dean McCreary. Keaton will star as retired U.S. Marshal Henry Tillman and Morgan Freeman will star against him as Joseph Mulberry, an outlaw.
The film will follow Tillman’s 40-year search for Mulberry, who killed Tillman’s wife, but is now also losing his memory. Deadline’s reporting states that there is also “a buried truth neither man may survive”. What that might mean, we have no clue but we’re eager to find out.
This is the first time Keaton and Freeman will share the screen in a whopping 38 years since 1988’s Clean And Sober in which Keaton played a real estate agent struggling with substance abuse and Freeman played a drug rehab counsellor.
“When I first read it, I thought, this is really good — and there’s more here for Morgan and me to mine together,” Keaton has said about the project, according to the outlet. “Once we talked, it became clear we were on the same page. Just as The Shawshank Redemption isn’t simply a prison movie, Rode to Ruin isn’t simply a Western. It’s a story with a lot of layers that happens to unfold in the West.”
Writer McCreary also weighed in: “Rode to Ruin is a deeply human story about forgiveness, revenge, redemption and the choices people make when time is running out. The prospect of Michael directing and sharing the screen with Morgan is everything we hoped this film could become.”
While most will know Keaton as an actor, this won’t be his first time behind the camera. Keaton first directed 2008’s The Merry Gentlemen and later, in 2023, Know Goes Away. His latest directorial effort was the short film Sweetwater, which was commissioned by Google’s AI On Screen programme, intended to make AI less scary. We’re not sure how well that is going…
There’s no release date or window for Rode To Ruin quite just yet, but we’ll make sure to keep you updated on that.
