Jeremy Renner Set To Play The Legendary Gunslinger Doc Holliday in New Film
Doc Holliday is one of my favorite legends from the old west. I've always enjoyed the stories that revolve around him. My favorite on-screen portrayal of the gunslinger came from Val Kilmer in the classic film Tombstone. He was so damn good in that role!
Now there's a new movie going into development in which Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Avengers) will play John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday and I'm actually pretty interested to see what his vision of the legend will be like.
According to THR, the film will be based on two novels written by Mary Doria Russell, which include Doc: A Novel and Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral. Those books were optioned by Palmstar Media, who is also producing the film. Producer Kevin Renner had this to say in a statement:
“We are excited to re-introduce this classic American character to a whole new audience by chronicling Doc Holliday’s incredible transformation from average Joe dentist to a man who Wyatt Earp called the ‘nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun [he] ever knew."
Producer Kevin Frakes added:
“Jeremy Renner as Doc Holliday … f****** awesome.”
Yeah, I think Renner will be awesome in the role. Will he be more awesome than Val Kilmer? That has yet to be seen. Either way, this is going to make for a great movie and I'm excited to see it! Here are the descriptions from each of the books:
Doc: A Novel:
Doc: A Novel: Born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday arrives on the Texas frontier hoping that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Soon, with few job prospects, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally with his partner, Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung, classically educated Hungarian whore. In search of high-stakes poker, the couple hits the saloons of Dodge City. And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and a fearless lawman named Wyatt Earp begins— before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology—when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.
Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral:
Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral: Epitaph tells Wyatt’s real story, unearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, this novel gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal thirty seconds in Tombstone. At its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for forty-nine years and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph her husband deserved.