News of an intriguing project has hit the web, with Woody Harrelson and Liam Hemsworth playing the leads in the 1880s Western By Way of Helena from director Kieran Darcy-Smith (Wish You Were Here). The script from Matt Cook (the upcoming John Hillcoat crime thriller Triple Nine) finds David (Hemsworth) a Texas Ranger in the 1880s who is brought to an isolated frontier town after the bodies of multiple Mexicans are found on the riverbank. He clashes with the local preacher (Harrelson), who has the townspeople in his grip.
I haven’t seen Darcy-Smith’s Wish You Were Here yet despite my interest for Australian cinema, but Australians have proven to do really well with the Western genre in the past (John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, Patrick Hughes’s Red Hill & Nash Edgerton’s modern western The Square) so I have enough good faith for now to go on. It’s nice to see Liam Hemsworth stretch his wings outside of a franchise, and Harrelson as the antagonist should be a delight – he gave one of the most terrifying villain performances in recent memory in last year’s underrated Out of the Furnace. We’ll keep an eye out for any upcoming news regarding the rest of the casting for By Way of Helena, and for now we’ll bet on a 3rd quarter 2015 release.
Source: The Film Stage
