Park Chan-wook’s new west­ern comes togeth­er at Amazon

Park Chan-wook likes to keep a lot of irons in the fire, leav­ing sev­er­al projects on to-be-made sta­tus while he pur­sues any one of them. One of those back-burnered ideas was for a west­ern script­ed by S Craig Zahler, ten­ta­tive­ly titled The Brig­ands of Rat­tle­borge when it was first knocked around sev­en years ago.

An exclu­sive from Col­lid­er spec­u­lates that the script’s extreme vio­lent con­tent (par for the course with Zahler, who shocked audi­ences ear­li­er this year with the mer­ci­less Dragged Across Con­crete) has kept it in pro­duc­tion lim­bo until now, but no longer. The script has been rebrand­ed with the slight­ly eas­i­er-to-remem­ber title The Brig­ands of Rat­tle­creek and Ama­zon has giv­en it the green light.

The retail giant plans a the­atri­cal run for Park’s next film, and the smart mon­ey says they’ll go even wider than on the roll­out for their last release togeth­er, The Hand­maid­en. Chalk it up to greater mar­ketabil­i­ty; Park has returned to Eng­lish-lan­guage film­mak­ing and the Unit­ed States after a spell in his native Korea, and the project has already attract­ed the atten­tion of a bona fide movie star.

Collider’s item spec­i­fies that Matthew McConaugh­ey has been approached for the lead role, a doc­tor who part­ners with a sher­iff (still to be cast with a star of com­pa­ra­ble wattage) to take revenge on a gang of no-good varmints what ran­sacked a defense­less fron­tier town dur­ing a recent rain­storm. Bit­ter vengeance, Old Faith­ful blood­shed, two stern-faced men form­ing an uneasy alliance for the sake of jus­tice – yep, it’s a Zahler script all right.

But Park’s remains the most intrigu­ing name attached to this project. He’s nev­er made a for­ay into the West­ern before, but hav­ing proven him­self a chameleon­ic genre mas­ter with psy­cho-thriller Stok­er and unhinged sci-fi with I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay, we can be sure that what­ev­er he comes up with will be fascinating.