Tommy Lee Jones makes a WESTERN?! Will wonders never cease? That’s right, the veteran film star and all-around badass gentleman of the plains Tommy Lee Jones has decided to step behind the camera once again for a remake of John Wayne’s late-career Western The Cowboys.
Word has it that Jones plans to direct and write the remake of the 1972 film about a veteran rancher who recruits some schoolboys for a cattle drive after his original men leave him to search for gold. The original film starred The Duke in the lead role, with veteran performers like Roscoe Lee Brown, and newbies like Bruce Dern and a young Robert Carradine in secondary parts. The Cowboys was actually a sort of action-comedy, taking the whole premise with a little grain of salt, so please don’t go looking for The Searchers in this one.
Jones is no stranger to directing, of course, having made The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He’s currently in post-production on another Western-style film The Homesman, in which he also stars alongside Hilary Swank. There’s no word on whether he’s going to take a part in The Cowboys, but given that it’s all about a grizzled rancher taking a bunch of young men under his wing … well, who else is going to play that part?
We are probably going to have wait awhile on casting and shoot dates for The Cowboys, but you can get your fix of Tommy Lee in the mob comedy The Family (along with fellow grizzled veteran, Robert DeNiro). Then we have The Homesman coming to theatres hopefully before the year is out. There’s plenty of Tommy Lee Jones to go around, thank God.
Does The Cowboys sound like an exciting prospect for Tommy Lee Jones? You can let us know all your thoughts in the comments.