‘A Walk in the Woods’: The tragedy of Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s failed third movie
Even though their names will forever be intertwined in Hollywood history, Paul Newman and Robert Redford only made two movies together, but if things had gone to plan, they could have made three.
Of course, the reason why the two legends have become so synonymous with each other is because their friendship transcended the screen. They were virtual strangers before they shared top billing in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but the production formed a bond that would become nigh-on unbreakable for the next four decades.
George Roy Hill’s classic western recouped its production budget more than 15 times over at the box office, won more Baftas than any film before or since, won four Academy Awards, and endures as one of the most iconic features that either of the A-list icons ever appeared in.
Individually, Newman and Redford were celebrated as among the most charming, charismatic, and effortlessly cool actors in the business, so it was inevitable that they’d make magic together. Four years later, they reunited for another critical and commercial smash hit, The Sting, which took home the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’.
That would be the final time the two close friends collaborated on the same picture, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. They were firm friends away from the cameras, but it would be more than 20 years before serious attempts were made to round out their spiritual trilogy, only for the repeated setbacks to ultimately run out of time when Newman passed away at the age of 83 in September 2008.
Redford optioned the rights to Bill Bryson’s novel A Walk in the Woods shortly after it was published in 1998, specifically to re-team with Newman. The literary adaptation was officially announced in 2005, with the actor and filmmaker signalling his intentions to reunite with the salad dressing kingpin, but his health was already beginning to fail by then.
Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition hit cinemas three years previously and turned out to be the final live-action entry in Newman’s filmography, and when he died, Redford abandoned A Walk in the Woods. He thought it was a permanent measure, until the project revved back into life with director Ken Kwapis at the helm and Nick Nolte stepping into the breach.
“Redford shelved the project,” Kwapis confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. “Bob told me that he couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone other than Newman, so the project sat dormant for some time.” In an inadvertent domino effect, Redford had directed Nolte in The Company You Keep, which convinced him that he was the ideal guy if anyone had the chops to step into Newman’s shoes.
The story of two elderly gentlemen hiking 2,000 miles across the rugged terrain of America’s Appalachian Trail would have been a fitting and elegiac swansong for the Redford/Newman double-act, but the latter’s death robbed audiences – and the star-powered duo – of the chance to say goodbye on celluloid. The movie was eventually made, but it wasn’t quite the same.
