Western ‘Dead for a Dollar’ Will Team Director Walter Hill With Willem Dafoe and Christoph Waltz

Walter Hill, the legendary filmmaker behind 48 Hrs., Streets of Fire, The Warriors, and so much more, is getting back behind the camera for the Western Dead for a Dollar. It’s Hill’s first feature since 2016’s questionable The Assignment, and will have the director working with Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe in a tale of a bounty hunter operating out of the New Mexico Territory in 1897.

Deadline has the scoop that Walter Hill is gearing up to direct Dead for a Dollar, his first feature film since 2016’s The Assignment. Their report states “Myriad Pictures is launching international sales for the hot package at this week’s Cannes virtual market.” This means I have to add a disclaimer that sometimes, movies announced at the Cannes virtual market never actually get made. They simply fade into oblivion. But it sure would be nice if this wasn’t those occasions, because I’d love to see a new Walter Hill movie.

Hill will write and direct Dead for a Dollar, with Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe set to star. The story is set in New Mexico Territory, Chihuahua, in 1897. Here’s a synopsis:

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.

But wait, there’s more!

When Borlund finds Rachel 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 longtime criminal rival.

Jeremy Wall (Gun-Shy), Kirk D’Amico (The Last Word), and Carolyn Mc Masters produce, with Matt Harris also working on the script. “Every film I’ve done has been a Western,” Hill said in the past. “Western is ultimately a stripped-down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary stories.”

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