Clint Eastwood virtually made a supernatural Western film with one among Hollywood’s most gothic administrators. Eastwood is not any stranger to revisionist Westerns, and he has appeared in multiple with a supernatural bend. He’s additionally somebody who modified Westerns for the higher when he helped popularize the antihero within the style.
At one time, Eastwood virtually teamed up with probably the most gothic administrators in Hollywood, and the concept of what may have been stays one thing followers can solely dream about. Director Tim Burton hooked up himself to adapt the supernatural Western novel The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, and he had Eastwood signal to star in it.
This appears virtually exceptional. Whereas Eastwood has appeared in some bizarre motion pictures over his profession, he has by no means appeared in something like a Tim Burton film. Gothic horror and Clint Eastwood appear virtually like a fever dream mixture, and imagining the actor showing in one thing as weird as The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is intriguing.
Tim Burton Needed To Adapt The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western With Clint Eastwood
The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is a novel by writer Richard Brautigan about two gunslingers employed by a younger lady to kill a monster. Set in Oregon in 1902, a Native American lady known as Magic Baby claims the monster lives within the ice caves underneath her home and killed her father. When the 2 gunslingers discover the monster, it is vitally completely different than what they anticipated.
This could have performed completely with Clint Eastwood’s Western antihero persona, because the gunslingers are morally ambivalent. Nevertheless, the story takes some weird turns, which might put it proper within the wheelhouse of a director like Burton.
The story strikes on to disclose that Magic Baby was one among two twin sisters, and so they convey the 2 gunslingers right into a state of affairs the place there is not an precise monster underneath the home, however just a little extra sci-fi horror in its taste. If something, it is virtually extra of a narrative somebody like Sam Raimi or Stuart Gordon would possibly direct, moderately than Tim Burton.
Burton was not solely hooked up to direct this supernatural Western, however he had two of Hollywood’s most legendary actors hooked up with him. Jack Nicholson was meant to play the opposite gunslinger alongside Eastwood. The truth is, Nicholson was hooked up earlier than Burton, when Hal Ashby was imagined to direct the movie.
Brautigan wrote a script for Ashby, however the director wasn’t pleased with it. Sadly, Burton additionally could not get the script into a spot the place both Eastwood or Nicholson felt snug with the mission. Each actors ended up leaving the manufacturing, and the director lastly adopted go well with.
Clint Eastwood Had A Historical past With Supernatural Westerns
This mission would not have been completely new territory for Clint Eastwood, because the Hollywood icon has appeared in some supernatural Westerns previously. That stated, nothing he has ever completed is as bizarre as The Hawkline Monster, and that is an actor who as soon as had an orangutan co-star. Eastwood’s different supernatural Westerns have been just a little extra demonic.
In 1973, Clint Eastwood starred as The Stranger in Excessive Plains Drifter. On this film, he performed a person who comes into city and begins terrorizing individuals there. He does some horrible issues when he arrives, and he instantly targets the evil individuals within the city. By the top, it turned out that The Stranger may need been a murdered lawman, returned as a spirit of vengeance.
A decade later, he starred because the personification of Demise in Pale Rider. This time, it wasn’t merely hinted at: Eastwood made it clear that he was Demise as he sought to convey justice to a lawless Wild West city. When speaking in regards to the film, Eastwood confirmed he was an “out-and-out ghost” in Pale Rider.
The distinction between these two motion pictures and The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is that the latter movie would have seen Eastwood and Nicholson taking part in it straight, all whereas ridiculous and weird issues occur round them. Eastwood may have been an ideal straight man, but it surely nonetheless appears bizarre to think about him on this story.
Bugonia Director Yorgos Lanthimos Additionally Needed To Make This Film
One other filmmaker wished to make this film, lengthy after Eastwood had indifferent himself from the mission. Yorgos Lanthimos, who launched his new movie Bugonia in 2025, was hooked up to direct The Hawkline Monster in 2019. He had a great writing accomplice, too, in The Nice creator Tony McNamara.
Nevertheless, very like Tim Burton and Hal Ashby, Lanthimos wasn’t in a position to get it completed. If anybody may have tailored this story, it was Lanthimos. His previous few motion pictures have included cult favorites like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He additionally has Oscar darlings akin to The Favorite, Poor Issues, and now Bugonia.
New Regency and Vertigo Leisure have been on board, but it surely by no means received made. Since then, he made Poor Issues, Sorts of Kindness, and Bugonia, and is ready to put in writing and direct an adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s thriller Fatale. Tim Burton and Clint Eastwood did not get the prospect, and it is nowhere close to near completion in 2025.