Untitled Alexander Payne Western

[Cremildo]

Regarding upcoming projects, Payne told a Lyon audience that he is currently working with [David] Hemingson on a long-time dream to make a Western movie.

“I finally found a creative partner who shares the same zeal that I have for Westerns. [What matters is] a shared sensibility about what makes a good movie, then it’s just a matter of luck about finding the right person, as I have the luck in finding this guy,” he said, pointing to his co-writer among the audience. +

[HipsterTrash]

Well I guess Jim Taylor isn't a fan of westerns.

Hope this is next and comes sooner than normal for him.

I can def see him being influenced by the likes of Wellman and Wyler with the likes of Westward the Women or Big Country.

[Cremildo]

A part has been written for Paul Giamatti.

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The Holdovers
David Hemingson at Deadline Contenders Film: Los Angeles Tommaso Boddi for Deadline

The Holdovers collaborators, director Alexander Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson, are working on another film together—a Western, in fact—and during a Q&A following a screening of The Holdovers at Soho House in West Hollywood on Friday, Hemingson revealed there’s a part earmarked for Paul Giamatti.

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” Hemingson said, “but what I will say is we’ve written him a part and I hope he’ll do it.”

If Giamatti, who stars in The Holdovers, accepts, it would be his third collaboration with Payne since Sideways in 2004.

[HillSprinter]

I’d rather they make their gumshoe film, but still interested in a Payne/Giamatti western.

[Cremildo]

Payne says he's been inspired by Anthony Mann while developing this.

“The one genre I’ve wanted to do is a Western,” said Payne. “So, right now while Jim [Taylor] and I are talking about a sequel to Election, with a different writer – the guy who wrote The Holdovers [David Hemingson], we have been conceiving a Western for years now.”

He added: “It would be nice to take a kind of realistic-slash-naturalistic approach to a Western and also using landscape. In as much as sense of place is important…part of my interest is having even greater dramatic, archetypical interplay between character and landscape. I think it’s really interesting. Also, I’d like to do a good car chase film.”

Payne said he’d been inspired by the work of U.S. director Anthony Mann, who frequently collaborated with James Stewart in the 1950s, making Western films such as Winchester ’73 and Bend of the River.

“You can really study the connections between the characters and the drama in the foreground and how the shifting landscape reflects the story,” he said.

[Cremildo]

Payne says this is the project he's most eager to make, and that it'll be an original story.

[...] the Film Gods brought me this project in Danish [“Somewhere Out There”]. Renate Reinsve is going to be in it. When I finish that, then I’m going to start work on a sequel to my film “Election,” that I made 25 years ago, and then I’ll get to the Western. The one I’m really most interested in doing. And I’m about 30 or 40 bad pages into it.