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.