He may share a character name with the lesser-known Horst Buchholz from the 1960-vintage The Magnificent Seven but expect Chris Pratt to play a showier, more Steve McQueen-like role in the Antoine Fuqua redo. Here’s the man himself, fresh from rustling dinosaurs and Infinity Stones, ready to do God’s worth with a six-shooter and hopefully some gnarly Pratt-style cowboy patter.
“Terrorism is alive,” Fuqua tells Empire, drawing surprising contemporary parallels with his Western that he passionately expands on. “It takes a society to fight them now. It’s not like a group of white guys has to fight the bad guys. We’ve all got to fight together against one cause.” In other words: his Seven are a more diverse band of heroic desperadoes than we’ve seen before.
The film sees a small town – in this case Rose Creek, built around a gold mine – threatened by a ruthless baron and his gang of thugs. When they kill several people in their attempt to take the place over, a young widow (Haley Bennett) hires a bounty hunter (Denzel Washington) to dispatch the bad guys, supplying him with the necessary funds to hire six gunmen to help him in his mission. Which is where Pratt and others come into play. Included in the line-up alongside those we've mentioned are Lee Byung-Hun, Martin Sensmeier and Manuel Garcia-Rulfi, who are going up against the villainy of Peter Sarsgaard.
The Magnificent Seven lands in the UK on September 23. Pick up the new issue of Empire (or take advantage of one of the special new subscription offers{