Another interesting project is assembling at the Cannes Film Market, as Deadline reports that writer/director Walter Hill (48 Hours, Red Heat, The Warriors, The Driver) is putting together a western called Dead For A Dollar that will see Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz playing another bounty hunter after playing on in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. The western will also see Willem Dafoe (John Wick, The Lighthouse) play someone that Waltz’s bounty hunter had sent to prison years ago.
The outlet added an extensive plot synopsis for Dead For A Dollar’s script that was penned by Hill and Matt Harris, which you can read below but might have a handful of spoilers.
Dead For A Dollar is set in New Mexico Territory, Chihuahua, during 1897. The story will follow Max Borlund (Waltz), a famed bounty hunter, hired to find and return Rachel Price, the politically progressive wife of Nathan Price, a successful Santa Fe businessman. Max is told she has been kidnapped by an African American army deserter, Elijah Jones, and is being held for ransom in Mexico. When Max goes south of the border he soon runs across his sworn enemy, expatriate American Joe Cribbens (Dafoe), a professional gambler, sometime outlaw, who Max had tracked down and sent to prison years before. When Borlund finds Rachel Price and Elijah hiding deep in the wilds of the Mexican desert, he discovers that Rachel has willingly fled from an abusive husband, and the runaway soldier is, in fact, her romantic partner. Max is now faced with a dilemma: does he return the wife back across the border to the man who hired him, or does he aid Rachel’s bid for freedom and fight off ruthless hired guns and his long-time criminal rival, Joe Cribbens?
The title an obvious nod to Sergio Leone’s iconic Dollars Trilogy, the trio of films was landmark work in the spaghetti western sub-genre.
Walter Hill as a writer worked on Alien (uncredited), Aliens, Alien 3, The Warriors, Red Heat, 48 Hours, The Driver, and Another 48 Hours.
SOURCE: DEADLINE
THE RONIN 