Back when it was first announced in May, there was no one  attached to the new version of The Magnificent Seven but Tom Cruise. Now though a writer has saddled up, in the form of novelist Nic Pizzolatto.

Pizzolatto is a former academic who taught literature courses in North Carolina and Chicago before going it alone as a writer. He's had a short story collection and a novel published to date - Between Here And the Yellow Sea (2006) and Galveston (2010) - and also has a couple of other screen projects percolating.

He wrote a couple of episodes of AMC's The Killing, and has New York Chinese underworld tale The Snake Head in development with Traffic's Stephen Gaghan directing. He's also penned a series for HBO called True Detective, which will star Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, and be directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre).

John Sturges' 1960 Magnificent Seven is, of course, itself a Western retelling of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It already spawned three sequels in the decade after its release, and two seasons of a TV series in the late 1990s, so it'll be interesting to see whether Pizzolatto can stave off any sense of overfamiliarity breeding contempt. The film has been developing at MGM for some years, but still hasn't officially been green-lit, despite the Cruiser's recent commitment. No pressure then, Nic.