It’s often exciting to see a production overcome unimaginable hurdles to finally get the green light, especially when it’s years in the making. Now yet another of those kinds of projects has gotten its much-needed lifeline to become a reality. Per a report fromDeadline, the cinematic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s groundbreaking, Pulitzer-prize winning Western novelBlood Meridianhas finally found its new home with New Regency, andJohn Hillcoatas director.
Blood Meridianis set to be an incredibly dramatic Western film, likely blended with some inevitable horror elements. At the helm of the project will be John Hillcoat, who is no stranger to adapting McCarthy’s work. He previously directed post-apocalyptic dramaThe Road(2009), which was nominated for numerous awards, particularly for cinematography and for lead actor Viggo Mortensen’s performance. He also previously worked on an Australian Western film calledThe Proposition(2005), which ironically served as a sort of test run for this new project given its very similar plot line toBlood Meridian. Later on he directed crime dramaLawless(2012) as well asTriple 9(2016), a heist action thriller that starred a slew of A-list talent. Most recently he’s directed episodes of the Showtime dramaGeorge and Tammy(2022), starring Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon.
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What Made it So Difficult to Get Blood Meridian Made?
Blood Meridianwas first published as a novel by Cormac McCarthy in 1985. It was heralded as an epic Western story that blatantly ignored the conventions and more charming ‘mythology’ oftraditional Western storytelling, instead peeling the curtain back in more ways than one on the barbaric events that took place at the Texas-Mexico border during the 1850s. The premise of the story, based on semi-historical events, centers on a 14-year-old Tennesseean boy known simply as the Kid, who gets tangled up in the ongoing American expansion that pushes westward throughout the 1850s. At the border between Texas and Mexico, he encounters a group of rangers who kill and scalp Native Americans, contributing to a disturbingly booming market for such an item.
The book as a whole is incredibly graphic and gruesome, filled with extreme violence basically from start to finish, pulling no punches on one of the bloodiest atrocities committed during the Wild West era. Such unsettling content made the book not well-received upon its release. However, through such an unconventional and uncomfortable lens, with time it still came out to be considered one of the greatest historical pieces ever written, dubbed a near-perfect example of the Great American Novel. Such accolades meant that repeated attempts to adapt the story to the big screen were made, as early as the 1990s. A line of renowned directors, including Ridley Scott and Martin Scorsese all tried to get the project off the ground. However, due to the incredible scale of the story and the gratuitous amount of violence throughout, it was one of those productions that was deemed “unfilmable”.
While no cast or specific plot details forBlood Meridianhave been mentioned, with the formal announcement of the project moving forward, more details on this monumental production are sure to follow soon enough.
