Real-life brother-in-laws and soon to be brothers outside the law in film, Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck are re-teaming for new outlaw western flick Far Bright Star, with the latter on board to direct.
Set against the sun-kissed outback of 1916, Affleck’s new drama will be based on a novel by Robert Olmstead, and it’s understood Damien Ober has been brought on board to transition the bandit story onto the silver screen.
As for Phoenix’s role within Far Bright Star, he’ll lead the western as a grizzled calvary man who, upon recruiting a ragtag bunch of scoundrels to help his plight, sets his crosshairs on a devious Mexican revolutionary known as Pancho Villa. Plans soon take a turn for the worst, however, and when his men are butchered, he’s cast astray in the desert and left fighting for survival.
Details at this stage are thin on the dusty ground, but it would seem that Casey Affleck took a shine to the western genre after his involvement in HBO miniseries Lewis and Clark. It’s still to make its debut on the network, however, after the director exited due to creative differences. For Far Bright Star, Affleck will be painting on a bigger canvas, and though there are no shortage of westerns on the horizon – The Hateful Eight, Jane Got a Gun, The Magnificent Seven remake – we have faith in Affleck and Phoenix’s new partnership.
Far Bright Star marks the pair’s first collaboration since Phoenix-centric documentary I’m Still Here. No word yet on a release window, though Casey Affleck can next be seen braving the icy waters of the North Atlantic in The Finest Hours.
