Ridley Scott Developing a Western!?

Movie Ridley Scott by Joey Paur

After all these years it looks like director Rdiley Scott is finally going to make a western! I've always wanted to see Scott take on the western genre, and now it looks like it's going to happen. In a recent interview with /Film the director reveals this new project and discusses several other films that he's been working on over the years like MonopolyBrave New World, and Tripoli.

Here's what Scott had to say about the western, not really revealing anything about the story,

I develop everything. I do. I learned that a long time ago. It’s never going to land on your desk, you have to come up with what you want to do with the story and I think sometimes it can take two or three years. I want to do a western really badly and I think I’ve got a western this morning, finally after two and a half years of talking and writing and talking and… I think I have it, which is kind of interesting.

It is interesting. I can't wait to see what exactly he's come up with, but I have no doubt that it's going to be awesome. Scott always tends to tell solid stories. When asked about other projects he's been attached to over the years he gave an update saying,

Monopoly’s first pass is written… I don’t know what to do with Brave New World. It’s tough. I think Brave New World in a funny kind of way was good in nineteen thirty-eight, because it had a very interesting revolutionary idea. It came shortly before or after George Orwell, roughly the same time. When you re-analyze it, maybe it should stay as a book. I don’t know. We tried to get it… 

The director then goes on to discuss his film Tripoli, that unfortunately ended up not happening. This is a movie I would have loved to see happen, but it doesn't look like it will at this point. I guess all we have is Scott's explanation and description of the story. 

Tripoli is great. It didn’t happen because of a personal thing. I felt somebody wasn’t well, so I couldn’t do it and I stopped, but Tripoli is great, because it’s about Thomas Jefferson and guy called William Eaton. William Eaton was a despot who was actually… He worked on the edge of the political arena in three states.

The United States then was three states and Thomas Jefferson spent his entire treasury or $11m dollars (which is approximately a third of the price of the homes of half the people I know in Hollywood)… he bought [land] from St. Louis to the coast, from Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon needed to cash to go to Moscow. Big mistake.

And then William Eaton goes out to the coast, where there’s a pasha of Tripoli who is a mother-fucking despot and gangster who was actually kidnapping and taking American frigates and crews. America only had three war ships, but there were a lot of commercial vehicles in that area…

[The pasha] was taking crews and putting them as slaves and taking them above deck and keeping them for ransom. So William Eaton said “Enough of this shit.” He went out there personally and started to create his personal war against the pasha and the pasha was the pretender. His brother was a Muslim…. They were all Muslim, but the brother had fled to Egypt and Eaton went to Egpyt and personally talked him into coming back. It’s a good story.

Are you excited about Scott finally making a western? Are you even a fan of the western genre? If so, what's your favorite western?

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