MGM drafts novelist Nic Pizzolatto to script The Magnificent Seven

I don’t think it’s just my extreme nostalgia attachment to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN that makes me nothing but wary of a remake – it’s also one of the best westerns ever made, and simply a great film to boot.  Then again THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was itself a remake of the superb SEVEN SAMURAI* and still managed to find its own identity, so perhaps it isn’t so far off to think that a remake might do so again.

But enjoy Tom Cruise as I do, I think he’s very much the wrong man to star.  There’s just something about the “Tom Cruise intensity sensibility” that works in a lot of projects just fine but would distract me in a movie like this.  I don’t know why, the thought of him playing a tough cowboy just doesn’t excite me.  But if it ever does happen, it will still be a fair while away as Cruise’s schedule is becoming more and more packed and newly hired novelist Nic Pizzolatto (HBO’s “True Detectives” with Harrelson and McConaughey) is only just now beginning work on the screenplay.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is just about the toughest and manliest movie around, EXPENDABLES series included, and starred Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn, Brad Dexter, Steve McQueen, and Robert Vaughn as “a group of American gunmen hired to protect a small Mexican village from a group of savage bandits” led by Eli Wallach.  The gunplay, the character dynamics – everything was geniously crafted, and I’d strongly recommend THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN if you somehow haven’t yet seen it.

*Akira Kurosawa was reportedly so satisfied with the film director John Sturges managed to make that Kurosawa actually gave him a samurai sword in honor of his accomplishment.