Organ Trail: Zoe De Grand Maison to star in horror Western for Paramount and director Michael Patrick Jann

You’ve probably heard of the Oregon Trail. Even if you don’t know about the real trail, a wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon back in the 1800s, you might still have heard about it from the old video game that brought the world the “You have died of dysentery” meme. Well, somebody – whether it’s screenwriter Meg Turner, an executive at Paramount Pictures, or someone else involved with the project – is a genius, because it has just been announced that Paramount has given the greenlight to a Western horror film with the brilliant title Organ Trail.

Michael Patrick Jann (Drop Dead Gorgeous) will be directing Organ Trail, and Zoé De Grand Maison (Riverdale) has signed on to star in it. The story finds

a young Abigale Archer friendless and alone in a brutal Montana winter during the 1870s—fighting for survival and to retrieve her one earthly possession, her family’s horse, from a gang of bloodthirsty bandits. 

Also in the cast are Olivia Applegate (Driven), Clé Bennett (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Nicholas Logan (Creepshow), Sam Trammell (Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), and Jessica Frances Dukes (Ozark).

Deadline notes that “Jann is a writer, director and producer who began his career as a member of the sketch comedy group The State, then co-creating the MTV show of the same name. He served as an executive producer and director for the series Reno 911!, also exec producing Flight of the Conchords and Little Britain for HBO, and directing episodes of Wayne for Amazon and Daybreak for Netflix. Jann is best known on the film side for directing the cult-classic beauty mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous.” He directed episodes of horror comedy shows like Daybreak, Reaper, and Ghosted, but it doesn’t look like he has ever directed a full-on horror project. So Organ Trail is something different for him.

I love when the horror and Western genres get mixed together, and I’m blown away by the title for this one, so I’m already hyped for Organ Trail.