Amazon Studios is reportedly working on a television reboot of the popular Western action IP The Magnificent Seven. This report comes barely a few weeks after news broke that the company is looking to reboot several IPs from Metro Goldwyn Mayer, which it recently acquired, as films, television series, or both.
Nic Pizzolatto, who created the anthology crime drama series True Detective, will write the script and serve as executive producer. According to Deadline, which broke the news, Pizzolatto was originally contracted to write an expensive original Western drama series for the studio. The show was to “follow a former outlaw on an epic journey, assembling a gang while facing a threat from his past as he and his cohorts encounter danger along the way.”
However, the studio’s executives decided that the story would be better told if it carried the face of an already established IP, ergo The Magnificent Seven. Given that Pizzolatto was one of the two writers who penned the 2016 remake of the 1960 film, it is hardly surprising that Amazon Studios chose him to headline this project.
The Magnificent Seven series reboot’s description reads as follows:
In the tradition of the great epics from the golden age of westerns, an outlaw and his cohorts must unite a disparate band of indelible fighters to defend a settlement of immigrant homesteaders in an open range war against cattle barons in central Texas, telling an expansive saga of adventure, action and romance.
The television series is still in the earliest stages of development and, as a result, does not have any cast or crew members attached yet. However, Mark Johnson, Bruce Kaufman, and Lawrence Mirisch will join Pizzolatto as executive producers on the project.
Pizzolatto is best known for his work on the anthology crime drama television series True Detective which aired its first season in 2014 and its latest installment in 2019. The series won four Emmy Awards over its three seasons and numerous other accolades. Although he had help writing a few episodes in Season 3, Pizzolatto wrote every episode across the show’s three seasons.
A fourth season, titled True Detective: Night Country, featuring the show’s first all-female-led cast will arrive in May. For the first time, Pizzolatto will not write any episode. However, he is attached as an executive producer.
The Magnificent Seven, a remake of the 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, premiered for the first time in 1960 to universal acclaim. Often lauded as one of the greatest Western genre films ever, its success led to three sequels and a television series.
In 2016, Metro Goldwyn Mayer expanded the canon with a remake that received mixed reactions from critics and achieved moderate success with a $162 million box office gross against a $90 million budget.
The remake featured an ensemble cast that includes Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio, Martin Sensmeier, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Lee Byung-hun, and Ethan Hawke who played members of the titular group of bounty hunters. Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett, and Luke Grimes, among others, also starred in the film. Antoine Fuqua directed the film while Roger Birnbaum and Todd Black produced it.
By the way, The Magnificent Seven is only the latest project to get an update in Amazon’s march to breathe life into its MGM IPs. According to reports, the company is also working on an interconnected Tomb Raider universe as well as a Michael B. Jordan-led Creed universe.
