Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, often name-dropped during conversations about The Great American Novel, is one of the more horrific books you’re ever likely to read. So wanton and cruel and brutal is its violence, many consider the book unadaptable … and the many, many false starts various studios and filmmakers have had in attempting to bring it to the big screen seem to indicate those people might be right.
And yet, today Deadline announced that John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road) has climbed aboard to helm an adaptation of the film for New Regency. Here’s how they describe the plot:
“Published in 1985, the novel is an epic tale of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a 14-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where [Native Americans] are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.”
The Kid’s journey through the southwest is absolutely harrowing. Scalps are removed in countless numbers. Atrocities are visited upon small villages that absolutely did nothing to deserve them. Children are murdered. And serving as a guide, partner, and eventual antagonist in all this is a fearsome man known as The Judge. Described as hairless, nearly seven feet tall, and bone-white, The Judge may or may not be Satan incarnate. Whoever Hillcoat gets to fill that role is likely going to be terrifying onscreen.
Is Blood Meridian a horror novel? In a number of ways, yes! Outwardly, it’s a western, but there can be no doubt that if Hillcoat adapts McCarthy’s novel accurately, it has every chance of being one of the most disturbing, violent westerns ever made. It should also be weird, which … well, if you’ve seen The Proposition, you know that making a “weird” and “violent” western is something Hillcoat is more than capable of. He’s an excellent pick for this project.
Deadline’s report neglects to mention a screenwriter, which we’re guessing means that one has yet to be hired. You can bet your ass we’ll be keeping a close eye on the answer to that question, and indeed any further Blood Meridian updates that might roll in going forward. Stay tuned for those and, in the meantime, consider watching The Proposition and reading Blood Meridian official FANGORIA-prescribed homework.
