Industry site Deadline is reporting that Mel Gibson is being busy lining-up a range of familiar faces for his announced remake of The Wild Bunch. The re-imagining of the classic blood-and-guts western, originally directed in 1969 by Sam Peckinpah, has been on the fast(ish) track for the last year, with Gibson working on the script with Brian Bagby… and it’s starting to look like it could have a testosterone ensemble of familiar faces to rival the likes of The Expendables franchise – and certainly played less for laughs.
The original film starred the likes of William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Warren Oates as aging outlaws looking for one last moment of glory. Three names that appear to be in contention for key members of the remake include Michael Fassbender, Jamie Foxx and Game of Thrones‘ Peter Dinklage.
Even though he was an A-List actor, major action star and an acclaimed director (including 1995’s Braveheart and 2004’s The Passion of the Christ) Gibson was, of course, blacklisted from Hollywood for nearly a decade for bad, drunken behaviour that escalated to racist and sexist incidents that in turn led to his arrest. However his appearance as the main villain in 2014’s The Expendables 3 and his return to directing (2016’s Hacksaw Ridge was nominated for four Oscars) have seen the industry seemingly forgive those incidents and return him to the fold. If the casting process continues at this speed and successfully lands the right people, production is scheduled to start in the last quarter of 2019 for a potential 2020 release.
