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Tumbleweeds dance across desert sands. The night is cold, colder by the hour. The lizards have dug into the sand. Roadrunners have found their brushes to sleep in. Danger lurks in the air, hiding in the open darkness.

A congress of bandits celebrates their latest thefts. They joke about the lives taken by their bullets. These godless, immoral thieves of the night eat well as they stoke the scullery fire. A presence not of this world approaches, they do not know him. They have heard the legends.

See him. Leather and chains and a skull on fire. His motorcycle’s hum dies down. The light from his head. The smell of sulfur. They fear not their fellow man, but they fear the Spirit of Vengeance.

They scramble, each man and woman fleeing. All that expanse of land and nowhere to go. They do not get far. He brandishes a chain...

It was more than 18 months ago that we learned John Hillcoat will adapt Blood Meridian, perhaps our era’s quintessential piece of cinema-defying material. What’s eluded a list of auteurs from notable (Todd Field) to intriguing (Tommy Lee Jones) to Ymmv (Ridley Scott) to Dear God (James Franco) had now fallen to a director most, regardless their opinion on his films, would call a journeyman––a journeyman who also earned Cormac McCarthy’s blessing as executive producer and one-time screenwriting volunteer. The time since has seen its author’s passing and (notwithstanding John Logan joining as scribe) little else on Hillcoat’s project.

Credit goes to Alexander Sorondo, who’s penned a five-part investigation into McCarthy’s later years on his Substack big reader bad grades. Reading requires a $5 subscription that’s more than worth the price of admission––safe to say the reclusive novelist has rarely seemed so available.

Despite not being created yet, Ridley Scotts dream movie sounds way more exciting than another Alien movie as it showcases a move away from the directors usual work. Since the release of the first Alien movie in 1979, Ridley Scott has become synonymous with Aliens famous science fiction franchise despite only directing three films; Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant. As of 2024, there have been seven movies in the franchise, with more upcoming Alien movies and TV shows planned for the future following the box office success of 2024s Alien: Romulus, which Ridley Scott produced.

However, Alien is not the award-winning directors only project, as Ridley Scott has many other action-packed movies in a variety of genres, including the likes of Blade Runner, Kingdom of Heaven, and Gladiator, which have seen similar success. Known for directing films in the crime, science fiction, and historical drama genres, Ridley Scott has a broad range...

The 2010 Boston Teran novel, The Creed of Violence was supposed to get a big screen adaptation starring Daniel Craig, but since the 2019 announcement, there's been no news about the project. While development hell is simply a facet of Hollywood, it doesn't make it any easier when a highly anticipated movie gets mired in the La Brea adjacent tar pits near Hollywood. The Creed of Violence is an action novel, set in Mexico in 1910, on the eve of the Mexican Revolution. On the Mexican-American border, an assassin, Rawbone, is on a mission.

There was immediate interest in an adaptation of the book, and in 2011, it was announced that Todd Field was attached to write and direct (via Empire). Since then, the adaptation has gone through numerous revisions. Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale were both attached at one point, and the film nearly began production in 2013. In 2019, James Bond star Daniel Craig was cast as Rawbone,...

Bone Tomahawk is a brooding horror Western that explores a dark story and darker ideas, but the 2015 movie's critical success proves that a novel from the same genre once considered unfilmable can and should be adapted. S. Craig Zahler's film, which boasts an all-star cast including Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, and Matthew Fox, is uncompromising in its brutality oscillating between the deliberate pace of classic Western stories and explosions of horrific violence. Such a combination could be deemed off-putting. Yet, not only do these ingredients help Bone Tomahawk succeed, but they also point the way for other similar projects.

In its basic premise, Bone Tomahawk is not unlike many more traditional Westerns, with a group of disparate characters assembling in order to rescue some townsfolk from hostile outsiders. However, while these story elements have been seen elsewhere, the specifics are uniquely horrifying. The kidnappers in question are cannibalistic and extremely violent,...

Cormac McCarthy’s grim Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic novel “The Road” was previously adapted for film in 2009, starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by John Hillcoat. Now the story is getting a renewed artistic interpretation in a hardcover graphic novel adaptation from French cartoonist Manu Larcenet, published in the United States by Abrams.

“The Road” features a father and son traveling through a dark dystopia, with the father looking to teach his son the lessons he’ll need to survive in a world where other survivors have become disconnected from their humanity. The original novel’s minimalist prose makes it a striking fit for the graphic novel world, with artwork taking the lead in telling playwright and novelist McCarthy’s tale.

Larcenet made a personal appeal to McCarthy to allow him to adapt “The Road.” Praising its atmosphere, Larcenet wrote, “I enjoy drawing the snow, the chilling winds, the dark clouds, the sizzling rain,...

Stefan Ruf’s latest film, Coyote Woman, promises a raw and intense take on the Western genre, drawing characters directly from Cormac McCarthy’s epic historical novel Blood Meridian. This blood-soaked journey into the American frontier will see the notorious scalp hunters Judge Holden and J.J. Glanton brought to life on screen for the first time. With its gritty aesthetic and powerful performances, Coyote Woman is poised to make a significant impact.

Influenced by controversial American Western Soldier Blue and Spaghetti Westerns such as Navajo Joe, Apache Woman, and Scalps, Ruf has crafted a film that blends the brutal realism of historical events with the stylized violence of grindhouse cinema. The screenplay, co-written by Ruf and John Herndon, weaves a tale of vengeance and survival against the harsh backdrop of the Wild West.

At the heart of Coyote Woman is its unique score, composed and performed by Ruf himself.

This may be painful, but prior to Taylor Sheridan’s arrival as a storyteller, the Western genre’s heartbeat was growing faint; its glory days were a mere echo in Hollywood’s canyon. Who would have dared to dream that a movie could really spur a renaissance and bring the Western back to the forefront of American culture, reminding us all of the thrill of the untamed land?

Ashley Platz in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone | Paramount Network

Indeed, it was the Oscar-winning film Unforgiven, directed by and starring the legendary Clint Eastwood. This golden nugget of Western filmography not only capped off Eastwood’s illustrious career as a cowboy but also carved a path for new stories to gallop into modern audiences’ hearts. That being said, it even provided the creative tinder for Taylor Sheridan’s now-acclaimed Yellowstone.

How a Classic Clint Eastwood Film Influenced Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone

Taylor Sheridan,...

Reader, you have been lied to! Film history is littered with unfairly maligned classics, whether critics were too eager to review the making of rather than the finished product, or they suffered from underwhelming ad campaigns or general disinterest. Let’s revise our takes on some of these films from wrongheaded to the correct opinion.

When Ridley Scott‘s “Blade Runner” was released in the summer of 1982, it met with lukewarm responses from audiences and, though there were outliers, largely mixed reviews. (Pauline Kael’s snide dismissal stuck in Scott‘s craw to the point that he continued to quote it in interviews 40 years later.) Scott had the last laugh, as it only took around 10 years for everyone to come around and acknowledge “Blade Runner” as a classic, and given how wrong the critics were initially one might think they would be careful about underestimating Scott again. Yet when Scott...

When it comes to novels being adapted into movies and television shows, Stephen King’s name stands on a throne for the gripping horror stories. Each and every book finds a place within the fans and their adaptations too get a twist like no other. Having seen so many different adaptations, there was one that he kept urging Warner Bros. Discovery to make but to no avail, Salem’s Lot.

Image via Stephen King In His Own Words Featurette | YouTube

While his own works keep getting adaptations, so much so that the year 2019 saw 4 of his books being adapted. Seeing so many of his own books getting adapted. There is one particular novel by another author that he wants none other than Taylor Sheridan to make. Interestingly enough, Blood Meridian was once almost adapted by Ridley Scott.

Stephen King Wants a Blood Meridian Movie Adaptation

Blood Meridian is an acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy.

When news broke last year of John Hillcoat adapting Blood Meridian, I had expressed some hope for similar treatment bestowed upon Cormac McCarthy’s final novels The Passenger and Stella Maris. This desire was almost entirely quixotic; his swan song is an über-nihilistic encyclopedic thriller, at least one-third of which is a two-person dialogue on the history of math, physics, the Manhattan Project (far more compellingly than Oppenheimer), God’s existence, and wanting to fuck your own brother, with a protagonist rather convincingly written as the smartest person alive. It is really not suggestive of a financeable movie.

No doubt emboldened The Bikeriders, however, Jeff Nichols will give it a shot. Speaking to Awards Watch, the writer-director revealed New Regency will back the effort, whether it’s one film or two (I can take a guess) or even arrives anytime soon; Nichols is also planning to adapt David Grann’s...

First announced in 2023, the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel Blood Meridian is still in the works, with John Logan announced as its screenwriter.

Announced last year, the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bracing western novel Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness In The West is still quietly moving ahead.

In the works at production company New Regency, the movie will be written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan, who’s produced some remarkably varied scripts across his career, ranging from Alien: Covenant to Skyfall to Gladiator.

Logan’s adapted screenplay will be directed by John Hillcoat, who has form when it comes to making films based on McCarthy’s poetic, witheringly harsh work – he previously made post-apocalyptic mood piece The Road in 2009, starring Viggo Mortensen. That film was also produced by New Regency.

“Blood Meridian has been one of my favorite novels since first reading it in 1985,” Logan said in a statement to Deadline.

Of all the famously unmade and never materialized film projects, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bleak and brutal Western, “Blood Meridian,” has to be near the top of the list. But as you likely know by now, if you’re a fan of this supposedly “unadaptable” book, a new film version is already in the works. And now, a new writer has been attached.

According to new reports, Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan (“Skyfall”) has been tapped by New Regency to work on the script for a feature film adaptation of McCarthy’s novel.

Continue reading ‘Blood Meridian’: Veteran Writer John Logan Boards John Hillcoat’s Adaptation Of Bleak Cormac McCarthy Western at The Playlist.

Considered by many to be the magnum opus of author Cormac McCarthy – whose works include No Country for Old Men, The Road, All the Pretty Horses, and Child of God, among others – the violent Western Blood Meridian (you can pick up a copy Here) was published in 1985… and in the years since, several filmmakers have made unsuccessful attempts to bring the story to the screen. Adaptations have passed through the hands of Tommy Lee Jones, Ridley Scott, and James Franco, with Franco getting the furthest with it, shooting 25 minutes of test footage before the producer shut down the project. With unrelenting violence and a dark tone, Blood Meridian has been said to be unfilmable. But director John Hillcoat, who previously helmed the feature based on The Road (pictured below), is pushing an adaptation forward at New Regency, and Deadline reports that John Logan, who received Oscar nominations for his work on the scripts for Hugo,...

Acclaimed writer John Logan will adapt Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” novel into a feature film for director John Hillcoat.

Hillcoat is also producing along with Keith Redmon for New Regency. Cormac McCarthy’s son, John Francis McCarthy, will serve as executive producer, while Cormac, who died in June 2023, will receive a posthumous executive producer credit.

“It’s incredibly exciting to have John Logan on board,” John Francis said. “Very reassuring in the seemingly long list of good news concerning what was originally such an intimidating undertaking.”

The project was originally set up with director James Franco and star Russell Crowe in 2016, but fell apart over rights to the book.

Based on historical conflicts along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, “Blood Meridian” follows the journey of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old from Tennessee, as he navigates the brutal and harrowing landscape of this new era.

Logan, a three-time Oscar nominee,...

Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan has come aboard New Regency’s adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian.

Logan, whose credits include Skyfall, The Aviator, Gladiator, and the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic, joins previously announced director John Hillcoat on the project.

Hillcoat will produce alongside Keith Redmon for New Regency. McCarthy’s son John Francis McCarthy will serve as executive producer, and Cormac McCarthy will receive a posthumous executive producer credit.

Blood Meridian is based on historical conflicts along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s and follows the journey of the Kid, a 14-year-old from Tennessee, as he navigates the...

Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” has been one of the trickiest classic novels to adapt for the screen, but it now has a three-time Oscar nominee who may finally crack it.

John Logan, the writer of “Gladiator,” “The Aviator,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Skyfall,” and the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” has been tapped to adapt “Blood Meridian” into a feature film.

Last year, New Regency announced it was developing a feature film based on the 1985 Western novel, and the studio attached John Hillcoat — who previously directed McCarthy’s “The Road” — to direct the film. Hillcoat is also directing and producing “Blood Meridian” alongside Keith Redmon for New Regency.

Cormac McCarthy is getting a posthumous executive producer credit on the film, and his son John Francis McCarthy is also serving as an EP.

“Blood Meridian” is based on historical conflicts along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s. The story follows the journey of The Kid,...

John Logan — the writer behind Aviator and James Bond movie Skyfall — has been tapped to adapt Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian for New Regency.

The synopsis for the Western, known for its descriptive violence, reads: “Based on historical conflicts along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, the story follows the journey of the Kid, a 14-year-old from Tennessee, as he navigates the brutal and harrowing landscape of this new era.”

As previously announced, John Hillcoat, who directed McCarthy adaptation The Road, will helm. Hillcoat will produce along with Keith Redmon for New Regency. McCarthy’s son, John Francis McCarthy, will serve as executive producer with McCarthy receiving a posthumous credit.

Said Morgan, “Blood Meridian has been one of my favorite novels since first reading it in 1985. It’s a majestic, beautiful and uncompromising book and I’m thrilled to be able to help bring Cormac McCarthy’s dark masterpiece to the screen.

Three time Oscar-nominated scribe John Logan is adapting National Book Award-winning author Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West for the big screen for New Regency.

John Hillcoat, who previously adapted McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road, will direct and produce along with Keith Redmon for New Regency.

The sprawling novel is widely considered one of the greatest works of American literature. Published in 1985, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West is an epic tale of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion which brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of a 14-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

The Blood Brothers Mother #1 contains mature content!

Blending classic Western elements with a tale of revenge, the first issue of The Blood Brothers Mother from Dstlry is an entertainingly grim setup for a bigger adventure to come. The debut serves as a background for the main characters but does so in a way that makes it feel like it's the main adventure from the very start. Though it appears to serve primarily as context, it is surprisingly engaging.

The Blood Brothers Mother has the creative team of Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso, Jared K. Fletcher, and Will Dennis. It is a mature comic full of violence and classic Western storytelling. Set in the American West of old, it features a trio of rough cowboys, Mexican lawmen, and a preacher in a mining town.

It also features a sampling of violence highlighting the lawless and chaotic nature of the setting. The Western...

This article contains spoilers for True Detective: Night Country episode 1.

True Detective season 4, subtitled True Detective: Night Country, isn’t shy about acknowledging its influences. In the first episode alone, the series showcases a DVD copy of John Carpenter’s The Thing, a well-worn edition of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and even several instances of the swirly “Carcosa” symbol from True Detective season 1.

There’s another major influence at play, however, and it comes directly from the terrifying annals of history. While episode 1 didn’t explicitly shout it out as an inspiration, showrunner Issa López mentioned it when speaking to Den of Geek and other outlets before season 1 premiered.

“Some mysteries that obsessed me as a child were the Dyatlov Pass incident and the Mary Celeste,” Lopez said.

The Mary Celeste refers to an 1872 mystery in which the American sailing vessel, the Mary Celeste, was discovered in the middle...

With panoramic shots of a wind-swept tundra and a skyline studded with jagged mountaintops, the opening scene of True Detective Season 4 Episode 1 strikes a grandiose tone.

It feels closer to Game of Thrones’ Wildling storylines than to the claustrophobic, gritty interiors that we’ve come to expect from HBO’s divisive cop drama.

Even after the requisite large firearm makes its first appearance -- via a frightened hunter aiming his rifle at a herd of stampeding reindeer -- there's little to give the viewer the sense that we're in 21st-century America, rather than someplace much more exotic and archaic.

It's only when the action shifts inside that the show's fourth season -- helmed by Issa Lopez, who replaces series creator Nic Pizzolatto as showrunner -- begins to bear any resemblance to its first three.

The Tsalas Research Station -- located just outside of Ennis, Alaska -- is well-lit when we first enter,...

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy's challenging and iconic novel, will finally be adapted into a movie after decades of speculation and failed attempts. The graphic violence and moral ambiguity of the novel, combined with McCarthy's poetic prose, have made it a difficult sell to studios and a formidable challenge for filmmakers. Filmmaker John Hillcoat has been confirmed as the director for Blood Meridian, following his successful adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road, and the movie is expected to closely follow the novel's harrowing story of violence and nihilism in the American Southwest.

The Blood Meridian movie has been in development hell for decades, but it will finally see the light of day. Cormac McCarthy, a luminary in American literature, is celebrated for his profound and often unflinching exploration of the human condition. McCarthy's novels have not only won prestigious awards like the Pulitzer Prize (The Road) and the National...

For a writer who spent most of his career outside the limelight, the outpouring of public admiration in the wake of Cormac McCarthy’s death on June 13 at 89 testified to the power of his work. An obscure figure with a cultish following for much of his writing life, McCarthy had long been esteemed by members of the literati. The late literary scholar Harold Bloom placed him on his very short list of American authors in the 20th century who had in their writing achieved the sublime, naming him alone as...

Late into Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, Viggo Mortensen’s Captain Gunnar Dinesen disappeared into a cave. What happened next, in that unnamed stretch of 19th-century Patagonia, was nothing short of otherworldly. Gunnar’s encounter down the grotto was Jauja’s climax, and it stood as a kind of revelation for film and filmmaker both. The narrative trap door stripped Jauja of its western trappings and lifted the Danish soldier’s search for his daughter across the pampa into the realm of myth before an ellipsis shuttled one across time and space and it all became something else entirely. It also moved Alonso away from the observational, minimalist style of his earlier features toward a more expansive, enigmatic, magical register. More than anything, perhaps, that baffling rupture suggested liberation: it was the sort of moment his previous work––with their intimations of spiritual mysteries and numinous references––had long courted; here it finally detonated,...

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as “The Road,” “Blood Meridian” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died Tuesday. He was 89.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced that McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“For 60 years, he demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his craft, and to exploring the infinite possibilities and power of the written word,” Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. “Millions of readers around the world embraced his characters, his mythic themes, and the intimate emotional truths he laid bare on every page, in brilliant novels that will remain both timely and timeless, for generations to come.”

McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his expansive, Old Testament style and rural settings.

One of the giants of contemporary literature is no more. Deadline is reporting that Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Country for Old Men and The Road, has died at 89. No specific cause of death other than natural causes has been revealed. McCarthy was one of a kind, being considered by many as one of the finest living Western authors. His books, which adopt a spare yet poetic prose, are all unified by the theme of a violent, sometimes contemporary (and sometimes not) West, as depicted perhaps most famously in No Country for Old Men. That was adapted into a stunning film by Joel and Ethan Coen. McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel, The Road, was turned into another great film by John Hillcoat (starring Viggo Mortensen). At the same time, he also wrote the screenplay for the divisive Ridley Scott film, The Counselor.

McCarthy kept busy until the end,...

Cormac McCarthy, the literary giant whose violently nihilistic visions of America influenced a generation of writers and filmmakers, has died at the age of 89. His death was confirmed by publisher Knopf. McCarthy passed away at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The news was first reported by Publishers Weekly.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1933, McCarthy published his first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” in 1965. He slowly rose to prominence in the literary world and eventually became known as one of the most important American authors of the 20th century for novels such as “Blood Meridian” and “The Road.”

In 2005 he published “No Country for Old Men,” which Joel and Ethan Coen adapted into a 2007 film that elevated their status as dramatic filmmakers and cemented McCarthy’s Hollywood legacy. Cinematographer Roger Deakins recently reflected on the making of the film, recalling that “Joel said we’re doing this script, ’No Country for Old Men.

Cormac McCarthy, the celebrated novelist known for his stunning, apocalyptic visions of the American West, died Tuesday, June 13. He was 89.

McCarthy’s publisher, Penguin Random House, confirmed his death in a statement, according to The Washington Post. A cause of death was not given.

McCarthy’s work was often bleak and brutal, his style of writing blunt and ceaseless with little use for punctuation. He published 12 novels through his nearly six-decade career, and is best known for Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy (released over the course of the Nineties...

Cormac McCarthy, generally considered one of America’s greatest living authors, has died. His death was confirmed by his son, John McCarthy. He was 89.

McCarthy is best known for books such as Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West; The Road, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and No Country For Old Men, which was adapted into the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning film.

His other published works include The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of Dark, Suttree, All the Pretty Horses – which won the National Book Award – The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country were adapted for film by Billy Bob Thornton, John Hillcoat and Joel and Ethan Coen, respectively.

McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal that No Country for Old Men was originally a screenplay, but failed to gain traction in that form. “In fact, they said, ‘That will never work.

Cormac McCarthy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who endured decades of obscurity and poverty before film versions of “All the Pretty Horses,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” brought him a wide readership and financial security, died Tuesday in Santa Fe, N.M. His publisher, Penguin Random House, said his son John McCarthy announced his death from natural causes. He was 89.

Extremely reclusive, McCarthy shunned publicity so effectively that one critic observed, “He wasn’t even famous for it.” But Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2008 adaptation of 2005 novel “No Country for Old Men” put him momentarily in the limelight; the crime thriller, which starred Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, won Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay and supporting actor.

While McCarthy’s first novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965, commercial success eluded him until his 1992 National Book Award-winning “All the Pretty Horses” and the...

According to a recent report from the Playlist, author Cormac McCarthy is currently in the midst of adapting his acclaimed and notoriously bleak 1985 novel "Blood Meridian; or, the Evening Redness in the West" into a screenplay for director John Hillcoat. Hillcoat was announced as the director of a "Blood Meridian" feature film in late April. The filmmaker also directed the 2009 McCarthy film adaptation "The Road" as well as the nihilistic Western "The Proposition" and the 2016 heist movie "Triple 9." McCarthy will not only write "Blood Meridian," but will serve as executive producer alongside his son, John Francis McCarthy.

McCarthy himself, the author of the celebrated novels "Suttree," "All the Pretty Horses," and "No Country for Old Men," has written several screenplays in his career, although only one -- the script for Ridley Scott's "The Counselor" -- has been produced to date. McCarthy wrote several unpublished screenplays for movies called "Cities of the Plain,...

In late April, New Regency announced that John Hillcoat will adapt Cormac McCarthy‘s “Blood Meridian” for the big screen, Hillcoat’s second McCarthy adaptation after 2009’s “The Road.” Regarded in literary circles as one of the greatest American novels of all time, McCarthy’s epic western about the human scalping trade in the Southwest 1850s isn’t for the faint of heart. And for a director, helming a film like “Blood Meridian” represents equal parts passion and masochism.

Continue reading ‘Blood Meridian’: John Hillcoat Says Cormac McCarthy Is Writing The Adaptation Of The Bloody, Bleak Western at The Playlist.

Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" is a modern American epic, a mythic tale that unflinchingly captures the brutal and violent spirit of the West, devoid of any of the heroism and starry-eyed optimism that's usually part of the genre. Shockingly, however, despite the novel's immense influence and grand cinematic scope, "Blood Meridian" has never been adapted for the big screen. Finally, after numerous attempts from a long line of filmmakers eager to bring McCarthy's seminal work to life, John Hillcoat will be directing a proper adaptation, according to Deadline.

There's an argument to be made that "Blood Meridian" is quite possibly the most savage, cynical, and terrifyingly bleak Western ever written. There are no beacons of justice in McCarthy's Wild West; instead, there's only the scalp-hunting Glanton gang and the carnage that his crew perpetuates. A deconstruction of Western tropes that serve to highlight the racist, imperialist, and sadistic...

Blood Meridian is set for a film adaptation after nearly three decades in production hell. The 1985 novel is from acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy, whose previous works The Road, No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, and Child of God have been adapted to the screen. Blood Meridian is an epic tale that follows a teenager who joins the real-life scalp-hunting group known as the Glanton gang.

Per Deadline, Blood Meridian is now set for a proper film adaptation after many years of attempts falling through. The project's new iteration is being mounted by New Regency with McCarthy and his son John Francis McCarthy on board as executive producers. Attached as producer and director is John Hillcoat, who is reuniting with McCarthy after helming The Road film adaptation in 2009.

Related: The Road's Tragic Ending Explained

Blood Meridian's Long Path to the Screen Explained

As early as 1995, many...

Nearly as large as Blood Meridian‘s literary reputation is the notoriety of many, many failed adaptations that have claimed the likes of Ridley Scott, James Franco (who was hilariously told he didn’t have rights), Tommy Lee Jones, purportedly even Martin Scorsese at one point. Few have come closer than John Hillcoat (of whose The Road adaptation Cormac McCarthy approved), to the point that he once offered to adapt his own novel: unlike seemingly everyone else, they “cracked how to make it into a film.” Which of course never materialized.

But John Hillcoat’s feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that his Blood Meridian movie will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, John Hillcoat. He is dancing, dancing. He says that his Blood Meridian movie will never die.

Sorry––succumbed to reveries for a second.

Great news, literature fans: Cormac McCarthy‘s “Blood Meridian” finally gets the cinematic treatment. Deadline reports that New Regency has an adaptation of the 1985 novel in development, with John Hillcoat set to direct. It’ll be Hillcoat’s second McCarthy adaptation after 2009’s “The Road.”

Read More: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2023

For those who haven’t read McCarthy’s novel, “Blood Meridian” takes place around the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, following a young man known only as The Kid as he enters the Indian scalping trade.

Continue reading ‘Blood Meridian’: John Hillcoat To Direct Adaptation Of Cormac McCarthy’s Novel For New Regency at The Playlist.

One of the most beloved novels from the author behind “The Road” and “No Country For Old Men” is finally getting its own screen adaptation. A film version of Cormac McCarthy‘s “Blood Meridian” is in the works at New Regency, sources confirmed to IndieWire.

First published in 1985, “Blood Meridian” is set in the 1850s and focuses on an unnamed teenager known only as “the kid” as he journeys across the American West and falls in with the Glanton gang, a real-life group of scalp hunters who targeted Indians along the Texas-Mexico border. The book initially received mixed reviews and lukewarm sales but has since been reevaluated as a classic and a subversive work in the Western genre.

Despite the novel’s fame, it has a reputation for being unfilmable due to its graphic content, dark tone, and introspective narrative. Several attempts to adapt the book have already been tried,...

Exclusive: New Regency is adapting Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, widely considered one of the greatest works of American literature, as a feature film. John Hillcoat set to direct.

The film will be produced by New Regency, Black Bear Pictures’ Keith Redmon, and Hillcoat. McCarthy and his son, John Francis McCarthy, will serve as executive producers.

Published in 1985, the novel is an epic tale of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a 14-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

McCarthy’s novels are always something the industry has been drawn to going back...

“I suppose that’s possible. I hope it’s possible,” says filmmaker when asked if his view might change over time.

Fresh off awards season where Tár earned plaudits, awards, and Oscar nominations, Todd Field has suggested the Cate Blanchett starrer could well be the last film he ever directs.

Asked in an interview with Cinema Scope if there might be another film after Tár Field replied, “I don’t think so.” When the interviewer asked if that might really be his last film he added: “I didn’t think about it until just now. It’s highly likely.”

When...

Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men Screenshot: Miramax On the journey to adapt any prose to screen, two roads inevitably diverge. There’s the devout route: Adaptations ripped unedited from an author’s pages. Then, there’s the opposite approach: Making the film so interpretive, the original text...

“Tár” is going to get people talking, but its star Cate Blanchett has made clear that she’s “not interested in agitprop.”

The Oscar winner is in Venice for the world premiere of the Todd Field-directed movie, and was in good spirits as she addressed journalists at a Thursday press conference.

The Focus Features pic stars Blanchett as fictional Lydia Tár, a globally renowned, gay and sometimes tyrannical conductor of a German orchestra, who finds herself in the crosshairs of a perilous #MeToo scandal. The film is Field’s first movie in 16 years, following the acclaimed “Little Children” (2006) and his breakout “In the Bedroom” (2001).

Asked whether she considered “Tár” to be an important movie for LGBT representation, as her 2015 film “Carole” was, Blanchett said it “felt urgent and undeniable,” but noted: “I don’t think about the character’s gender nor her sexuality at all, at all. I love that about the film.

Taylor Sheridan is a filmmaker and writer who has put the American frontier at the center of nearly all his stories. One of the most prominent examples is "Yellowstone," a neo-western TV series that centers on the inter-personal relationships of ranchers and those surrounding the borders of their land. The show's first season received a mixed reception, with subsequent seasons receiving a much more positive reception.

The majority of "Yellowstone" was written by Sheridan, with the filmmaker occasionally directing an episode or two throughout the show's five-season run. However, Taylor Sheridan's love for the Western didn't start with "Yellowstone." He's dabbled in the genre with films like "Hell or High Water" telling stories of modern-day outlaws. Sheridan's passion for giving the Western genre a modernized spin wasn't from out of nowhere. Instead, Sheridan's movie and television work stemmed from the films and literature that influenced him in his early adulthood.

No, she’s not playing a superhero (unless you are a lifelong Tanglewood member) but Cate Blanchett is heard describing how she can stop time in the new, strange trailer for “TÁR,” the mysterious upcoming feature from Todd Field.

It’s been 16 years since Field’s last film, “Little Children,” for which Kate Winslet received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, as did Jackie Earle Haley for Best Supporting Actor and Field himself, shared with Tom Perrotta for Best Adapted Screenplay. Prior to “Little Children” was 2001’s “In The Bedroom,” which accrued five Oscar nominations: Sissy Spacek for Best Actress, Tom Wilkinson for Best Actor, Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay for Field and Robert Festinger, and Best Picture.

Field has spent the years since his awards-heavy films not-quite-getting projects off the ground, like a television adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s “Purity” and a movie version of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.

Sixteen years since his last film “Little Children” peeled back the malaise and psychosexual dysfunction of suburbia, director Todd Field is back on the film festival stage with “TÁR.” Field has paddled around a suite of projects over the years, from a 20-hour Showtime limited series take on Jonathan Franzen’s tome “Purity” with Daniel Craig and David Hare, to a likely-never-to-happen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s unfilmable western “Blood Meridian.” After adapting fiction for his last two films — Tom Perrotta’s novel “Little Children” and the Andre Dubus short story “Killings” for his debut feature “In the Bedroom” — Field returns to writing his own material.

“TÁR” is set to make waves at the fall festivals with stops at Venice and NYFF before Focus Features releases the whopping two-hour-and-40-minute film on October 7 stateside. Cate Blanchett stars as renowned (and highly fictional) composer Lydia Tár, in the film regarded as...

Three-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Todd Field has emerged with his first film in 15 years since the release of “Little Children,” and it’s set to star Cate Blanchett. The “In the Bedroom” director and Blanchett have paired for “Tar,” an original drama that Field wrote and will direct for Focus Features. While the plot details are under wraps, the film is reported to be set in Berlin. Production is aiming to kick off this September. Deadline first reported the news. Field will also produce “Tar” under his Standard Film Company banner alongside Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert for Emjag Productions.

Todd Field broke out of the American Film Institute to direct his explosive feature debut “In the Bedroom,” starrring Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, and Marissa Tomei in Oscar-nominated roles. The drama about parents grappling with the death of their son after an incident involving his girlfriend earned rave reviews and...

Brian De Palma has a fetish for the histrionic. His films are governed not by the rules of reality, with its rigor and banality, but by the aberrant logic of cinema, that realm where spectacle holds sovereignty. Though a semblance of our world may seep in here and there, like a gelid breeze through a cracked-open window, De Palma’s films are concerned more with opulence that mimesis. They are shimmery and silly exercises in stylish indulgence, populated by lecherous characters who act not in their own best interest but in the interest of cinematic craftsmanship. Emotions and ideas are in service of the art, of that immutable, often imitated style, gaudy, glorious, and mottled with blood, those baroque set pieces around which expository scenes are wrapped like garland. As Pauline Kael wrote in her review of The Fury, “Most other directors save the lives of the kind, sympathetic characters...

Celebs like to curl up with interesting reads, too.

In the most recent episode of PeopleTV’s Shelf Life, Chrissy Teigen, Megan Mullally and Stephen Colbert share their favorite books… as of right now. Colbert reveals he has an especially voracious appetite for literature by listing not one, not two, but four books that are on his night stand. (Proving that, unlike some, he doesn’t rely solely on Twitter to inform his social commentary.)

Here’s the list:

Chrissy Teigen: The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

“I am about half way done with Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me,...

"This here's the paradise of the locust, the lizard, the snake. It's the land of the bleeding rifle."

So snarls murderous outlaw Frank Griffin in the monologue that gives Godless, the new seven-episode Netflix miniseries premiering on November 22nd, its title. Leading a pack of marauders out to terrorize and slaughter every man, woman, and child that crosses their path, he’s not merely a creature of the American West in the 1880s. Griffin is some otherworldly manifestation of it, a reminder that anyone who ventures into this borderless, lawless...

In the chaotic carnage of the apocalypse, can enemies come together to outlive the living dead? We'll find out when Madison opens the gates of Broke Jaw Ranch to The Nation, and with the mid-season 3 premiere episode airing September 10th on AMC, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Dave Erickson about the back half of his final season as Fear The Walking Dead showrunner (he'll be busy developing another series for AMC), including the deepening divide between Madison and her children, tense times at Broke Jaw Ranch, and the aftereffects of a critical kill.

Congratulations on the first half of season 3, which was really timely and compelling television. Now we’re seeing [Qaletqa] Walker’s people moving into Broke Jaw ranch and everyone is going to have to try and co-exist peacefully, which feels timely with current events right now. Did real life events impact the writers’ room for this season?...