If you were Jim Sheridan, and your recent cinematic output included the critcally-mauled likes of Get Rich Or Die Tryin' and Dream House (as well as the much better received Brothers), we wouldn't blame you for wistfully wanting to re-visit a better time in your career. But digging up a film you wrote back in the 1990s seems like an odd idea.Still, Sheridan's going for it, developing a new take on **Into The West.
The original, which Mike Newell brought to cinemas in 1992, saw the likes of Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin and Brendan Gleeson in the tale of two young boys who escape the grit and grime of their Dublin council estate by heading out on an adventure to recover the mystical horse stolen from their pop (Byrne), once known as King Of The Travellers. At the time, we said, "its heady mix of Irish myth and gritty realism will effortlessly capture the imaginations of all ages."
Now, it would seem Sheridan is looking to direct this one himself, to re-capture those imaginations, and to give the story more of a chance to be seen across the pond. There's no word yet on what changes he might make, and whether it'll tell the same story or follow a new, related yarn. What is known right now is that he's nabbed 50,000 in development money from the Irish Film Board.
Sheridan has been developing several projects, including Black Mass about recently-captured Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger and a drama called Sheriff Street.