‘The Magnificent Seven’ welcomes its new cast member, Peter Sarsgaard, who is in final negotiations to portray one of the villains in the upcoming remake.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s husband will be joining Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Haley Bennett, Wagner Moura and Vincent D’Onofrio, who are all aboard the Antoine Fuqua-helmed film to be released in 2017.
Byung-hun Lee, who starred in ‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ and ‘I Saw The Devil’, was also recently confirmed to sign on to the project. The actor will also appear in ‘Terminator: Genisys’, the latest installment in the sci-fi action franchise set for a release in July.
Aside from Sarsgaard, former ‘Game of Thrones’ actor Jason Momoa has joined the ‘Magnificent Seven’ to reportedly portray a villainous role as well. Momoa was also recently announced to play Aquaman in the upcoming ‘Justice League’ film adaptation by Zack Snyder.
The upcoming ‘Magnificent Seven’ will be a remake of the 1960 movie directed by John Sturges, which took inspiration from the 1954 classic ‘Seven Samurai’ by Akira Kurosawa.
Sturges’ version of the story, which starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn, focused on a group of gunmen with different personalities who work together to protect a Mexican village from Eli Wallach and his group of outlaws.
Such storyline led to a number of sequels and a television series on CBS.
After being rewritten by John Lee Hancock (‘The Blind Side’), the screenplay for the new ‘Magnificent Seven’ was initially drafted by writer Nic Pizzolatto (‘True Detective’).
However, the 2017 remake is expected to present a mistreated mining town, rather than a Mexican village, taken over by a gold baron.
Meanwhile, Pratt opened up about studios taking on opportunities to come up with remakes of films that are centered on “things that are already well known.”
"In this day and age, you need a title to reach out to an audience,” the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ star said.
He further stated about the new film: "They're often quite different - characters, story, setting. It is going to be called the Magnificent Seven but it's not going to be the original Magnificent Seven.”
