Is The Western Movie Genre Dead!
Welcome to Open Range, I’m Susan Allen. Given the fact that there just never seems to be anything good on TV my husband and I have been revisiting some of the old Westerns, currently we are into Wanted Dead Or Alive starring the iconic Steve Mc Queen. Watching the accomplished actor begs the question of whether the western can make a comeback today. Stay tuned for Open Range. Is the era of Western movies over? To become relevant today does the traditional format need to aways be outside the box? Good questions especially given the fact Harrison Ford’s Cowboys and Aliens wasn’t a big box office success while the remake of True Grit was. Kevin Costner’s’ movie The Postman released in 1997 ( much of it filmed in the Northwest) was the 80 million dollar nail in the coffin that killed the Western movie genre in Hollywood until recently. The remake of True Grit proved there was still a viable audience and the success of the Book of Eli means more westerns are coming our way. The release of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is highly anticipated and for Zorro fan’s Zorro Reborn has a scheduled 2014 release date . In this new futuristic version Zorro will be a hero fighting for revenge, (no surpirse there) but few other details have been announced other than Gael Garcia Bernal will play Zorro. Zorro without Antonio, I think not! Finally another new western in the works is titled the Last Stand staring of all people, ex governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who I know for a fact actually does sit a horse pretty well, but in regards to the cowboy way and code of the west, he's no Sam Elliot or Tom Selleck, I'd say they miscast the lead in this one.
