In today’s world of social media, it is now easier than ever to communicate directly with fans and bypass press statements. I could write a piece on how much we as the press should or should not take tweets as serious sources – even when they come directly from the source- but we’ll leave that for the comments section or another time.
Last Friday, Ti West took to Twitter to do a live chat to help promote his new film The Sacrament. The discussions revolved around behind the scenes info on the 18 day shoot of The Sacrament, his eagerness to re-edit his own version of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever and his enthusiasm for MMA fighting. Among the many tweets however was some new information on his next project, which is surprisingly not a horror film, but a western that will shoot this summer.
Upon further investigation I found reports from a few months back that the film will be titled In a Valley of Violence and will star Ethan Hawke and John Travolta with low-budget wunderkind Jason Blum on board to produce. No plot details were released back then and there are still none to be found other than it is a revenge western set in the 1890s.
Look below for the tweets regarding his western and some of my thoughts beneath them.
@2FlashGordon7 I am making a western next. not a horror movie though. Think HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER type vibe.
— Ti West (@Ti_West) May 9, 2014
@Future_that making a western next. start this summer.
— Ti West (@Ti_West) May 9, 2014
While I appreciate the start date confirmation on this project and am excited about most anything in the vein of High Plains Drifter, it’s interesting to note that West didn’t namedrop his cast nor the title of the film during the live chat. I don’t want to start stirring the conspiracy pot, but it does make me wonder if anything has changed since March. Counter to the previous sentence, the project is still listed on the IMDB pages of Hawke, Travolta and Blum as “in development”.
I am a massive fan of Ti West, with The House of the Devil ranking among my favorite horror films, while The Innkeepers and his work on V/H/S standing as great works of postmodern horror as well. I watched The Sacrament over the weekend and really enjoyed it. It’s yet another frightening and effective deconstruction of a horror subgenre from West. And don’t worry, I happily paid.
In West’s filmography he’s managed to upend and rethink the stereotypes and tropes in these horror subgenres and genuinely scare and surprise audiences. It was only a matter of time before West brought his talents outside of the horror genre, I am incredibly excited to see what he does with a western. With his knowledge of genre expectations, it will be interesting to see how he shifts and counters the stereotypes and tropes within the western. There is no other information about the project now, but as soon as there is we’ll have it up.
