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Television shows with a Western theme have been very popular in the last few years. As a result, a literary classic, which received the miniseries treatment in 1989, is making a comeback.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Lonesome Dove and the other books in the Pulitzer Prize-winning series from author Larry McMurtry will be adapted for the screen once more. Teton Ridge Entertainment acquired the film and television rights to the property in a deal with McMurty's estate. However, the publishing rights remain with Simon and Schuster. It is unclear if the novel adaptation will be a movie or a television show.

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Jeremy Saulnier's Rebel Ridge uses western tropes to tell a modern story about police brutality and racial profiling.

Thomas Tull and Jillian Share from Teton Ridge Entertainment will produce the project, along with Jon Jashni. McMurtry's...

America is in another Western ascendancy, as the sweepingly cinematic genre has been given new life on TV. With Taylor Sheridan's continued iron grip on the drama side of the genre with his shows Yellowstone and its spin-offs, as well as the latest series from writer Mark L. Smith, American Primeval on Netflix, the dirt-flecked New World creation is on the come up. And as the prevailing winds move in this creative direction, studios have been eager to gobble up the rights to the classics. An according to The Hollywood Reporter, production company Teton Ridge has just acquired the rights to Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove book series.

Lonesome Dove — which was published in 1985 — is the first in McMurtry’s series (but third chronologically), which also includes the subsequent books, Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, and Streets of Laredo. The book, which was made into a popular...

Teton Ridge Entertainment has landed the rights to literary franchise Lonesome Dove for future film and TV projects.

Development will begin with the first book in the series, Lonesome Dove, followed by the rest of the tetralogy, including Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon.

The deal was made between Teton Ridge Entertainment and Larry McMurtry’s estate. It covers all rights except publishing, which remain with the novels’ publisher, Simon and Schuster. Thomas Tull and Jillian Share from Teton Ridge Entertainment will produce, as will Jon Jashni, Curtis McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

Published by Simon & Schuster, Lonesome Dove reached huge commercial and critical success upon its release in 1986. On the New York Times Best Sellers list for 24 consecutive weeks in hardcover and 28 consecutive weeks in paperback, Lonesome Dove sold over 4 million copies, was translated in numerous languages and won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction before it was...

Teton Ridge Entertainment has acquired the rights to “Lonesome Dove,” Larry McMurtry’s sprawling series of novels about the American West. The deal was made between the entertainment company and the author’s estate and covers all rights except publishing, which remain with the novels’ publisher, Simon and Schuster.

In a release announcing the pact, Teton Ridge announced that development will begin with the first book in the series, “Lonesome Dove,” followed by the rest of the tetralogy, including “Streets of Laredo,” “Dead Man’s Walk” and “Comanche Moon.” The novels focus on members of the Texas Ranger Division, spanning from when Texas was a republic until the start of the 20th century when it was part of the U.S. The books could inspire a series of films or shows — or both.

Thomas Tull and Jillian Share from Teton Ridge Entertainment will produce, as will Jon Jashni, the veteran producer and media investor; Curtis McMurtry,...

As the Western genre continues its renaissance thanks to Yellowstone and its Taylor Sheridan-backed spinoffs, one of the classics of the literary genre is being put into development.

Teton Ridge has acquired the rights to adapt Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and the subsequent books in the Pulitzer Prize-winning series. The deal, which was made with McMurty’s estate, covers film, TV, and all rights except publishing, which remain with Simon and Schuster. It’s unclear if the new adaptation will be a film or for television.

McMurtry’s epic follows retired Texas Rangers who go on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, during which time they encounter many dangers. Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon followed Lonesome Dove, and were also adapted for TV, with Comanche Moon airing in 2008.

Thomas Tull and Jillian Share from Teton Ridge Entertainment will produce the Lonesome Dove adaptation,...

Exclusive: Honorary Academy Award winner Wes Studi and SAG Award, NAACP Image Award and Golden Globe nominee Adam Beach have signed on to star in the thriller American/Indian from writer-director Peter Curtis Pardini.

Set in the wake of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the film follows twin brothers Slim and Joe Gresham (both played by Studi), products of the Indian Boarding School system, who have taken very different paths in life. Joe is now a popular U.S. Congressman about to step down to lead the transformation of their tribe’s bingo hall into an expansive (and lucrative) casino resort, while Slim works behind the scenes as a brutal enforcer who ensures everything and everyone stays in line for his brother, no matter the cost. What follows is a dark and thrilling tale of wealth, deceit,...

Diana Ossana is flat on her back, wracked with grief. She’s just lost her best friend and writing partner, Larry McMurtry, a man she nursed through open heart surgery in 1991 and a couple of other heart attacks, who after three years of battling congestive heart failure, finally succumbed Thursday in his home in Archer City, Texas. He was 84. “Larry through stubbornness and brilliance kept going,” said Ossana. “He kept going. I feel like one of my limbs is cut off. We’re all pretty crushed.”

Ossana picked up the phone to talk about her writing partner of 28 years, with whom she shared the 2006 Screenplay Oscar for adapting Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” “We were each other’s best friend,” she said. “Larry would tell people to call me in the last 10 years or so: ‘Ask Diana, she knows me better than I do myself.’ From the beginning of our friendship,...

Diana Ossana is flat on her back, wracked with grief. She’s just lost her best friend and writing partner, Larry McMurtry, a man she nursed through open heart surgery in 1991 and a couple of other heart attacks, who after three years of battling congestive heart failure, finally succumbed Thursday in his home in Archer City, Texas. He was 84. “Larry through stubbornness and brilliance kept going,” said Ossana. “He kept going. I feel like one of my limbs is cut off. We’re all pretty crushed.”

Ossana picked up the phone to talk about her writing partner of 28 years, with whom she shared the 2006 Screenplay Oscar for adapting Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” “We were each other’s best friend,” she said. “Larry would tell people to call me in the last 10 years or so: ‘Ask Diana, she knows me better than I do myself.’ From the beginning of our friendship,...

Larry McMurtry, the Texas novelist known for American West epics like Lonesome Dove and the Oscar-winning screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, has died. McMurtry’s death on Thursday was first reported by The New York Times. He was 84.

Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1936, McMurtry was a prolific author with an uncanny gift for making a lengthy opus like Lonesome Dove — all 843 pages — eminently readable. The page-turning tale of two grizzled cowboys on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the mid-19th century won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. First...

Larry McMurtry, who won an Oscar for penning Brokeback Mountain, earned a nomination for The Last Picture Show and authored books that spawned Emmy winner Lonesome Dove and Best Picture Oscar winner Terms of Endearment, died Thursday of heart failure. He was 84. The news was confirmed to media outlets by family spokeswoman and 42West CEO Amanda Lundberg.

McMurtry — whose son is the singer-songwriter James McMurtry — won the Pulitzer Prize for writing Lonesome Done, which became a popular 1989 CBS miniseries and spawned a sequel and a syndicated series, and was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal by President Obama.

McMurtry’s 1975 book Terms of Endearment became the 1983 film from writer-director-producer James L. Brooks. Starring MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow, the pic was a commercial smash and led all films with 11 Oscar noms. Along with Best Pictrure, it earned Academy Awards for Shirley MacLaine, Nicholson and...

Larry McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose novels, such as “The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Lonesome Dove,” were turned into award-winning films and who won an Oscar for co-adapting “Brokeback Mountain,” has died, according to The New York Times. He was 84.

A spokesperson for McMurtry’s family confirmed his death to The New York Times. No cause of death was given.

McMurtry and his frequent collaborator Diana Ossana penned “Brokeback Mountain” based on Annie Proulx’s short story, taking the Western genre in which McMurtry so frequently worked in a new direction: a gay love story. The film saw this theme welcomed by large mainstream audiences for the first time and also won the Oscar for best director and was nominated for best picture.

McMurtry also shared a 1973 Oscar nomination with Peter Bogdanovich for the adaptation of McMurtry’s novel “The Last Picture Show.”

With William D.

Update: Transformers star Josh Duhamel is officially boarding the Lionsgate Jennifer Lopez movie Shotgun Wedding. Jennifer Coolidge and Sonia Braga are also joining to respectively play the moms of Duhamel and Lopez’s characters.

The announcement was made by Erin Westerman, president of production for the Lionsgate Motion Pictures Group.

“We couldn’t be happier for our bride and groom of this Shotgun Wedding,” said Westerman, confirming the casting of Duhamel. “We know Josh and Jennifer will make a compelling and sexy on-screen couple and they will be fun sparring partners as their dream destination wedding erupts into a memorable nightmare. We are also thrilled to bring Jennifer and Sonia on to our cast as Mothers of the Bride and Groom. Their acting and comedic talents will add another fun layer to this already-rich action-comedy.”

Logline: Darcy (Lopez) and Tom (Duhamel) gather their lovable but very opinionated families for the...

Robert Evans, the legendary head of Paramount Pictures and larger-than-life producer of “Chinatown” and “Marathon Man,” died Saturday at the age of 89. An aspiring actor, the tan and good-looking Evans claimed that actor Norma Shearer spotted him poolside and asked him to play her former husband, the legendary MGM exec Irving Thalberg, in the film “Man of a Thousand Faces.” As an actor, Evans never achieved great things.

He would make his mark as a top executive at Paramount, mentoring and clashing with up-and-coming directors such as Roman Polanski, Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich.

With him goes a vital link to Hollywood’s golden age and to the “young turks” who ushered in a bold new period of moviemaking in the 1970s. Bogdanovich spoke with Variety about Evans’ life and legacy. It was Evans who bought Bogdanovich’s first picture, the 1968 suspense thriller “Targets,” and later collaborated with him...

Two-time Oscar nominee Carter Burwell has penned music for the films of Joel and Ethan Coen for more than 30 years, including such classics as “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski.” But “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” was unique: a six-part Western with stories ranging from comic to bleak. As Joel Coen told him, the single thread that bound all six together was that they all involved “non-accidental death.”

“Each of the films is so different in tone and characters and story that I couldn’t find a musical solution that would work for all of them,” Burwell concedes. Ultimately, he decided to bookend the film with versions of the old cowboy song “Streets of Laredo,” and there are guitars, harmonica and tack piano sprinkled throughout.

But, he adds, “We needed a big, traditional Western sound” for four of the six segments, which needed “a Dimitri Tiomkin sense of scale,” referring to...

The Coen brothers’ omnibus Western, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” has some fairly grim stretches, but before it goes there, the first segment has a few moments of pure musical-comedy exhilaration. Singer-songwriter Gillian Welch describes the assignment, as it came in to her and partner David Rawlings from the Coens. “It was a pretty straightforward thing: ‘Well, we need a song for when two singing cowboys gun it out, and then they have to do a duet with one of ‘em dead. You think you can do that?’ ‘Yeah, I think we can do that’,” she laughs.

It was an opportunity to do more of a throwback pastiche than Welch and Rawlings would ever do for their own purposes as serious Americana heroes. “The more peculiar restraints you put upon a song, the more fun it is, so this was kind of a dream assignment,” Welch says. “And they didn...

It’s the one saga of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral that puts Western legend into proper perspective as to the nature of money, power and the law: Edward Anhalt’s vision is of a gangland turf war with sagebrush and whiskey bottles. James Garner is a humorless Wyatt Earp, matched by Jason Robards’ excellent Doc Holliday. It’s one of John Sturges’ best movies.

Hour of the Gun

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date September 19, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: James Garner, Jason Robards, Robert Ryan, Albert Salmi, Charles Aidman, Steve Ihnat, Michael Tolan, William Windom, Lonny Chapman, Larry Gates, William Schallert, Jon Voight.

Cinematography: Lucien Ballard

Art Direction: Alfred C. Ybarra

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Written by Edward Anhalt

Produced and Directed by John Sturges

Producer-director John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun was a dismal non-performer in...

Sam Shepard, the actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who played Rayburn family patriarch Robert on Bloodline, died Sunday at his home in Kentucky, Broadwayworld.com reports. He was 73 and suffered from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Als.

Shepard was a series regular in Season 1 of the moody Netflix drama, then recurred in Seasons 2 and 3. His other television credits include Discovery’s Klondike and CBS’ Streets of Laredo miniseries, and A&E’s Dash and Lily.

An accomplished film actor — he garnered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in 1983’s The Right Stuff — Shepard also was a prolific playwright...

The director that epitomized the 1970’s, Joseph Sargent, has sadly passed away. (1925-2014)

With a career lasting 50 years, Sargent brought to the big screen such thrilling cinema as The Taking Of The Pelham One Two Three, MacArthur, White Lightning and Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Directors Guild of America President Paris Barclay made the following statement upon learning of the passing of director Joseph Sargent:

“When it comes to directing Movies for Television, Joe’s dominance and craftsmanship was legendary – for the past 50 years. With eight DGA Awards nominations in Movies for Television, more than any other director in this category, Joe embodied directorial excellence on the small screen. He was unafraid of taking risks, believing in his heart that television audiences demanded the highest quality stories – whether chronicling uncomfortable historic events like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in Miss Evers’ Boys, or compelling personal stories about inspiring individuals like...

©2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Oscar-nominated actor James Garner has passed away at the age of 86.

From AP:

Garner, whose whimsical style in the 1950s TV Western “Maverick” led to a stellar career in TV and films such as “The Rockford Files” and his Oscar-nominated “Murphy’s Romance,” was found dead of natural causes at his home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles Saturday evening, Los Angeles police officer Alonzo Iniquez said early Sunday.

Police responded to a call around 8 p.m. Pdt and confirmed Garner’s identity from family members, Iniquez told The Associated Press.

There was no immediate word on a more specific cause of death. Garner had suffered a stroke in May 2008, just weeks after his 80th birthday.

Although he was adept at drama and action, Garner was best known for his low-key, wisecracking style, especially with his hit TV series, “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files.

American character actor who appeared in seven westerns directed by John Ford, including The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

The actor Harry Carey Jr, who has died aged 91, was the last surviving member of the director John Ford's stock company, which included John Wayne, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson, Anna Lee, Ward Bond, Andy Devine and Harry's own parents, Olive and Harry Carey Sr. They formed a cohesive group and contributed to the distinctive world of the Fordian western.

Carey Jr, nicknamed "Dobe" by his father because his red hair was the same colour as the adobe bricks of his ranch house, made seven westerns with Ford, typically in the role of a greenhorn soldier. The most characteristic of these was Lieutenant Ross Pennell in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), the callow rival of John Agar for the hand of Joanne Dru. After she opts for the more handsome Agar,...

As one of America’s greatest ever stand-up comedians, George Carlin spent five decades shining the light on social and political issues, delving into unknown territory and always telling the truth. His brand of comedy shocked, stimulated, educated and ultimately amused his audience. He was a lover of the English language and possessed wicked memorising skills, constructing routines such as ‘Modern man’, hardly taking a breath as he rolled from word to word. A precursor of modern day stand-up, Carlin never stopped grafting away at his craft, producing twenty albums, fourteen HBO specials, writing three best selling books and touring across America with over a hundred live dates a year.

Born on May 12th, 1937, in Manhattan, Carlin was brought up by his mother alone, after his father left when George and his brother were still young. He was raised a Roman Catholic, something that he could not help but rebel...

Ja from Mnpp here, continuing Tennessee Williams Centennial Week with a look at John Huston's 1963 film The Night of the Iguana. I chose Iguana because it's one of the few adaptations of Williams' work that I hadn't seen already, and because IMDb's summary made it sound torrid in the best Williams way. Defrocked priests and wanton teen girls and sapphic spinsters all flitting about a Mexican beach cut off from civilization? Yes please.

But truth be told, I found the film a little wanting, not wanton. Richard Burton's in full bluster, screaming and sloshing about as the drunken ex-man-of-the-cloth Shannon, Deborah Kerr barely registers as the sexless traveling painter he's too big a mess to end up with, and not a whole lot seems to gel.

 

I was fond of Grayson Hall as the lesbian intent upon Shannon's destruction (she was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to...

James Gammon, the character actor who was a staple on TV, film and theater, has died. He was 70 years old. Gammon famously portrayed Lou Brown, manager of the Cleveland Indians in the 1989 comedy "Major League" and its 1994 sequel. He appeared in many films including "Urban Cowboy," "The Milagro Beanfield War," "Leaving Normal," "Ironweed" and "Cold Mountain." Gammon was a notable player on the smallscreen and played the father on "Nash Bridges" from 1996 to 2001. He appeared on "The Waltons," and the 1995 miniseries "Streets of Laredo" and guest appearances ranging from "Gunsmoke" and other westerns in the 1960s to "Grey's Anatomy" in 2007. Gammon was also a co-founder of the Met Theatre, and was a...