Classic Clint Eastwood movies and the legendary Akira Kurosawa films they tend to be based on always seem to provide a nice happy place for viewers. There’s something about a good old samurai flick or spaghetti western that feels like home, and clearly producer Mark Gordon has realized this. His production company, Mark Gordon Pictures, has just announced plans to adapt 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, which served as Eastwood’s breakout role, into a new TV series.
Mark Gordon Pictures recently obtained the rights to not only A Fistful of Dollars, but also Yojimbo, the Kurosawa picture that inspired it, as the first step in developing the series. Well, maybe “inspired” isn’t the appropriate term, as Dollars is an actual shot-for-shot remake of the Kurosawa classic. The timeless tale of a lone drifter arriving in town just in time to fix its problems has become a tried and true formula that inspired countless other stories over the decades, so a show based on (one of) the original takes on it seems fitting.
Writer Bryan Cogman of Game of Thrones fame is also reportedly on board with the series, which bodes well for those with an affinity for emotional turmoil. Currently, no other cast or crew info has been revealed. Frankly, most of it probably hasn’t even been decided yet either, considering how early the idea is. Of course, that shouldn’t stop any excited potential viewers from speculating on their own.
Yojimbo was groundbreaking when it was released in 1961. Starring the always fantastic Toshiro Mifune as the nameless protagonist, it paved the way for multiple film genres. The typical samurai film known today stems all the way back to this movie, while all the classic action-filled western flicks can claim the same. A Fistful of Dollars started a surprising trend of adapting distinctly Japanese stories into a distinctly American style (though, ironically, many of these films were Italian-made), and somehow it worked. Heck, it worked well enough to inspire two more films featuring Eastwood’s unnamed gunslinger, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. They even proved popular enough that people don’t even remember how Toho, the production company behind Yojimbo, filed a lawsuit regarding the “unofficial” nature of the remake.
So where can a series like this go? Well, the story of a mysterious drifter showing up and solving a town’s problems is pretty much tailor-made for an episodic structure. Even as recently as last year, The Mandalorian featured a similar idea, with the titular bounty hunter finding a new planet, station, or other setting in each episode on his journey. Of course, it also maintained an overarching storyline which kept it all connected, so perhaps something along those lines would work for A Fistful of Dollars.
Hopefully this series can get off the ground soon, because a good old-fashioned western seems like just the visual comfort food many audiences could use right about now.
Source: Deadline
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