Alejandro González Iñárritu is no stranger to difficult subjects, having directed the likes of 21 Grams, Amores Perros and Babel. So it makes a lot of sense that Warner Bros. would want to attach him to dark revenge drama The Revenant.
Adapted by Mark L Smith from Michael Punke’s novel, the plot follows real-life frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass, who is left for dead by his companions after a bear attack in the 1820s.
Though two men volunteer to bury what everyone assumes is his corpse, they instead rob and then desert him in the freezing cold of South Dakota. Fuelled by rage and driven by revenge, Glass survives and sets out on a 3,000-mile mission to get back at those who have wronged him.
Revenant has been something of a troubled child for filmmakers, since it was originally set up by Park Chan-Wook with Samuel L. Jackson in the lead. Then word arrived that The Road’s John Hillcoat would tackle it and that Christian Bale was seriously considering nearly dying to research the main role (okay, not quite, but he was interested in playing Glass). Hillcoat, however, instead focused on crime saga The Wettest County in the World and Bale never committed.
Can Iñárritu get it made? Well, he does know a lot about working with smaller budgets, so he can likely pull off the tricky tale for a price pleasing to the studio’s bean counters. But given the history of this one, we’ll wait and see…