Now that we know Ridley Scott will be directing the Bee Gees biopic next, I can give some details about the Western he was about to shoot this spring before he aborted the entire thing.
Contrary to an earlier hunch, it is not an adaptation of S. Craig Zahler’s novel “Wraiths of Broken Land,” instead it sounds like a completely and totally different story, one soaked in Native American history and disease.
What’s been revealed is that “Freewalkers” is a period film, set in the snowy Midwest, about an Indian girl who becomes infected with measles and has to battle the storms, and violent men, to get cured.
Scott has described the film as "a f***ing savage Western […] It’s a period film, a bucket list project with a script like perfectly distilled liquor,” and added that he had two stars ready to join him.
I was told that one of those stars was Lily Gladstone, fresh off her Oscar-nominated work in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” I could not second-source this intel, but just thought I’d mention it since it’s a juicy tidbit that’s been making the rounds. Gladstone’s presence would have surely made it a buzzy project.
Last November, Scott told The New Yorker that he was location scouting and storyboarding the Western, and that he wanted to shoot it in March. Sadly, just last week, Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates told AwardsDaily that the film was canceled and that, up until March of this year, she and Scott had been working on making it happen.
Will the project ever be revived? Scott, 86, has three post-Bee Gees projects in the works: an adaptation of Kevin McMullin’s short story “BOMB,” the Wall Street thriller “Big Dogs” and the spy thriller “Queen & Country.”