Movies are expensive and really hard to make — but despite the odds, a lot of them still do get made. Unfortunately, even after big names have signed on, there’s never a guarantee that the project will ever see the light of day or have a single frame of footage shot. In some cases, these hypothetical movies become famous “What If” stories, like Quentin Tarantino‘s Star Trek, or Tim Burton‘s Superman movie, written by Kevin Smith and starring Nicolas Cage. Projects like these are often doomed to lay dormant in “Development Hell,” which also seems to be the case with a film called Wraiths of the Broken Land, which both director Ridley Scott and Project Hail Mary screenwriter Drew Goddard had plans to make back in 2016.
Several months after their collaborative success with The Martian, Variety announced that the filmmaking duo would once again team up, this time to work on a gritty Western adapted from the horrific and well-written novel of the same name by S. Craig Zahler, who you may know as the writer/director of such underseen classics as Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99. (Hopefully, sometime in the near future we’ll also get to see the release of Zahler’s The Bookie and the Bruiser, if someone can locate a One Wish Willow and not be selfish with what they ask for.)
What’s ‘Wraiths of the Broken Land’ About?
It’s not exactly surprising that Wraiths of the Broken Land has had problems moving forward, considering one of Zahler’s hallmarks (besides cool-sounding titles) is the sheer unapologetic brutality of his stories. If you don’t know anything about the book, the story takes place in the early 1900s, at the tail end of the Old West, and follows a gang consisting of two brothers, their father and a few of his old outlaw acquaintances, as well as a translator hired for the job. They’re on a mission to rescue their two sisters, who’ve been abducted and forced to work in a brothel in Mexico.
Just based on that description, it’s clear that this is a bleak narrative, and if you’re at all familiar with Zahler’s style, you know that he’s not afraid to get dirty. Wraiths of the Broken Land is part of his unofficial trilogy of Westerns, which include Bone Tomahawk and the novel A Congregation of Jackals. All of them are excellently written and executed, but also the types of things that’ll make you want to take a searingly hot shower after finishing, or, at the very least, watch some cartoons.
They’re not horror stories, but they play to the brutality of the Old West and are unflinching with their portrayal of violence. He’s been compared to Tarantino for his style, but Zahler’s approach to violence is never amplified or played for yucks. Instead, it’s genuinely disturbing, and may be considered too much for some audiences—it’s wild that the vivisection scene in Bone Tomahawk even exists—which is why it’s a bold move for any major studio to try to adapt his work. It’s an especially surprising choice for Scott and Goddard, which is also why it would’ve been an interesting challenge for the both of them.
The Adaptation Would Have Pushed Scott and Goddard in New Directions
To date, Ridley Scott has never made a full-on Western, shy of a few neo-Western moments in films like Thelma & Louise, and, most recently, The Dog Stars, so it would’ve been neat to see him take on new territory. He also doesn’t shy away from brutality and disturbing subject matter, with movies like The Last Duel and Brad Pitt’s death scene in The Counselor supplying ample evidence that he’s not afraid to disturb an audience. The more interesting leap would’ve been to watch writer Drew Goddard work with the material.
While Goddard’s scripts often dabble with dark subject matter, for the most part, his characters are generally written to be likable and relatable, which is why his interpretations of endearing characters like Mark Watney (Matt Damon) in The Martian and Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) in Project Hail Mary played to his strong suits. There aren’t any characters like that in Wraiths of the Broken Land. At best, there are morally gray characters with a noble goal that you can get behind, but no one gets out of the story completely clean, and one member of the party in particular is arguably as cruel and vicious as the villains; he just happens to be on the side of the protagonists. Seeing Goddard tackle characters like that would’ve been an impressive test of his skills as a writer, since that’s a steep dive from what audiences expect from him.
While adapting Wraiths of the Broken Land is still an intriguing prospect, it doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon. Scott is reportedly about to start production on an adaptation of Treasure Island starring Hugh Jackman, as well as working to get another Alien prequel with Michael Fassbender off the ground. Meanwhile, when Goddard isn’t too busy counting his Project Hail Mary money like Gus Van Sant in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, he’s also currently developing a new Matrix movie, though details on that are scarce. So, while anything is possible, when it comes to a film adaptation of Wraiths of the Broken Land, we may have to place it comfortably in the pile of what could’ve been.
