How Clint Eastwood and John Wayne’s unmade movie ended up on the Hallmark Channel: “It could have been great”
Even if it had turned out to be one of the worst movies ever made, The Hostiles would have been a genre-defining film for the sole reason that it would have featured Clint Eastwood and John Wayne in the leading roles, stunt casting that would have guaranteed a huge return on its investment.
On paper alone, it was a mouth-watering prospect. Eastwood was the rising star of the western, taking the medium in a darker, more revisionist direction in films like the Dollars trilogy, Hang ‘Em High, and High Plains Drifter, cementing himself as the unequivocal heir to the throne ‘The Duke’ had occupied for so long.
Wayne, meanwhile, was in the twilight years of his career, but remained a formidable force. They were both churning out westerns at the same time, and they were the undoubted 1A and 1B in the eyes of audiences and studio executives, creating a tantalising pitch of ‘old meets new’ under the same roof.
Penned by Larry Cohen, the script sounded fairly formulaic, but it would easily be elevated by its iconic stars. The Hostiles followed a degenerate gambler, played by Eastwood, who won half the estate of an aging Wayne, forcing them to work together despite their clear and obvious disdain for each other.
Eastwood liked the script, and he forwarded it to ‘The Duke’ with designs on gaining his approval. Unfortunately, Wayne wasn’t a fan of High Plains Drifter and the usurper’s approach to the genre that made his erstwhile rival a Hollywood icon, which was enough to torpedo the entire idea. Several attempts were made to change his mind, but he wasn’t one for budging.
“I remember one script sent to him, intended as a co-starring vehicle for him and Clint Eastwood,” Wayne’s long-time secretary and last love, Pat Stacy, recalled. “And Duke’s disgust when he told me, ‘This kind of stuff is all they know how to write these days; the sheriff is the heavy, the townspeople a bunch of jerks, someone like me and Eastwood ride into town, know everything, act the big guys, and everyone else is a bunch of idiots.”
That was enough to pump the brakes on The Hostiles, robbing audiences of seeing 1970s-era Eastwood and Wayne bicker, fight, and banter, before eventually partnering up, gunning down a bunch of goons, and saving the day. Predictable? Of course, but it would have been a western for the ages nonetheless.
When it fell apart, Cohen was distraught, calling the unmade picture “one of the greatest disappointments of my career,” with Eastwood’s non-negotiables hammering the final nail into the coffin because, even though the writer thought “it could have been great” without ‘The Duke’, “Clint did not want to do The Hostiles with anyone else except John Wayne.”
If it couldn’t be made with those two, then the only logical replacements were Dean Cain and James Tupper, said nobody ever. Three decades later, and Cohen’s script was dusted off, rewritten by Bob Barbash, followed almost all the same beats, rebranded as The Gambler, the Girl, and the Gunslinger, and premiered on the Hallmark Channel in 2009, which might be the biggest fall from grace in cinema history.
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