The Man with No Name shall ride again as Deadline reports the Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood western classic A Fistful of Dollars will get the remake treatment in a partnership between Hollywood and Italian studios.
Released in 1964, A Fistful of Dollars introduced audiences to Eastwood’s Man with No Name, a wandering cowboy who finds himself in a small town ruled by two feuding families. He further stokes the tensions among them by working for both families, pitting them against each other as the body count climbs higher.
The film spawned the ‘spaghetti westerns’ and had a huge influence on westerns for decades. The Man with No Name is one of Eastwood’s most iconic roles, one he reprised twice more as A Fistful of Dollars is the first in Leone’s Dollars Trilogy (sometimes also called The Man with No Name Trilogy), followed by For A Few Dollars More in 1965 and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in 1966, the latter often being considered the best of the trilogy and a defining film not just of the western genre, but all of cinema. It itself is considered to be an unofficial American remake of the Japanese film Yojimbo.
Leone and Eastwood’s Dollars films are also notable for presenting a less romanticized view of the Wild West than previous westerns before it, showing that area and time of history was not just rough-neck heroes riding into town to swiftly defeat villainous gangsters, but a lawless land with corrupt officials and morally grey people placing survival above all else.
A Fistful of Dollars will be produced by Euro Gang Entertainment’s Gianni Nunnari and Simon Horsman with Italy’s Enzo Sisti of FPC. Jolly Film, one of the production companies of the original, will oversee production.
“Enzo is one of the most experienced producers in the film business, and we are fortunate to call him our partner on this incredible project. We are determined to produce a remake that does justice to the great Sergio Leone’s classic,” Nunnari and Horsman said.
“I am delighted to partner with Gianni again having just worked with him on Those About to Die,” Sisti said, “and with Simon on the remake of this classic film, which created a whole new sub-genre in film spawning over 500 European westerns.”
Development on the Fistful of Dollars remake has only just begun so we’ll have to wait a while before learning who might direct, write and star in it.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
