Joe Penhall's most recent adaptation, The Road, is now in cinemas, and the writer has just been hired by Focus Features to tackle John Williams' 1960 Western novel Butcher's Crossing.
The studio is including the film as part of a deal it struck with Sam Mendes, and the hope is that Penhall's script might just tempt the Revolutionary Road director to sign on.
Set in 1870, the adventure story follows a man who drops out of Harvard to pursue a dream of heading West to the titular Kansas town. Once there, he joins the search for a great buffalo herd. And they say kids waste their educations these days…
Penhall, who also wrote Enduring Love, is already busy working on Deep Water for Fox and a version of his own play, Landscape With Weapons that Road director John Hillcoat is considering as a future project.