It’s officially a all-out Training Day reunion as Ethan Hawke has joined the cast of Antoine Fuqua‘s The Magnificent Seven remake at MGM. Hawke joins his Training Day director as well as co-star Denzel Washington in the film recently rewritten by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) after “True Detective” creator Nic Pizzolatto wrote the previous draft.
The film, a remake of the 1960 John Sturges original, which itself was a remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai, tells the story of an army of bandits terrorizing a small Mexican farming village. Desperately needing protection, the farmers offer their last bit of money to a group of idle gunfighters. The men accept the job – not for cash, but for the chance to return to the action. The remake will move the action from a Mexican village to a mining town taken over by a gold baron.
Ironically enough, I watched Seven Samurai just last night at the local Cinerama and enjoyed every minute of the massive epic on the big screen. Personally, I’m nowhere near as big a fan of Sturges’ remake and I can’t say I have a particular belief Fuqua can deliver anything close to iconic with this story, but it is always fun to whenever a Western gets made.
Along with Hawke and Washington, Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World) and Haley Bennett, who co-starred with Washington in Fuqua’s The Equalizer, are also on board to star. [Variety]
