Wal­ter Hill’s new west­ern pits Christoph Waltz against Willem Dafoe

The pro­gram­ming at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val offers the pub­lic a sneak pre­view of the com­ing year-plus in cin­e­ma, but that’s only half of it. The Marché, where deals are made and pub­li­cized between indus­try offi­cials, pro­duc­ers, and tal­ent, projects the future of Hol­ly­wood even fur­ther down the line, more like a pre­view of 2023 or 2024 in film.

Just this morn­ing, news broke of one such high-pro­file sign­ing, unit­ing two award-laden movie stars with a leg­endary direc­tor on the skids as of late. You guessed it: Wal­ter Hill is mak­ing anoth­er movie, and he’s return­ing to his wheel­house of the West­ern genre, and he’s bring­ing Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe with him.

Dead­line reports that they will star in Dead for a Dol­lar, a dust-bit­ten yarn of rough rid­ers around Chi­huahua in the New Mex­i­co Ter­ri­to­ry cir­ca 1897. Waltz gets back in the sad­dle last vis­it­ed on Djan­go Unchained as a boun­ty hunter, sent to retrieve a suc­cess­ful businessman’s wife after she’s kid­napped and ran­somed by an African-Amer­i­can desert­er from the military.

Once he cross­es the line into unset­tled lands, he runs into his out­law neme­sis (that’s Dafoe) and makes the sur­pris­ing dis­cov­ery that the woman he’s pur­su­ing has gone of her own voli­tion, escap­ing her abu­sive hus­band to start a new life with her lover free of racial per­se­cu­tion. He’s then faced with a choice between his job and what’s right, and all the while, his (Da)foe con­tin­ues to close in as he gets ready to go in for the kill.

Hill’s done some of his finest work in the oater genre, and at any rate, it’s hard to imag­ine that this won’t be an improve­ment on his last film, the dis­mal trans­gen­der crime thriller The Assign­ment. With two heavy hit­ters in the lead roles and two still to be filled, it has to be.