Stone Village Television has announced it is working on a new series about Old West legends Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Scott Steindorff and Dylan Russell’s production company won the screen rights to the project after a bidding war, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The show will be based on Charles Leerhsen’s book, Butch Cassidy: The Story of an American Outlaw. Paul Newman and Robert Redford previously played the title roles in the 1969 movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The western was added to the National Film Registry in 2003 and AFI included it on its list of the 100 greatest American films.
“Scott seems to me uniquely qualified to explore the Butch Cassidy story as a TV series,” said Leerhsen. “He’s been a lifelong fan of the movie and was a colleague and friend to Paul Newman, who to many people is Butch. But beyond that he is as excited as I was to discover that the movie, as great as it was, left out some of the most intriguing parts of Butch and Sundance’s great adventure. Scott is drawn to the fact that there’s so much untapped drama and romance in the true tale — as well as a mind-blowing finale that the Hollywood of 50-something years ago felt it just couldn’t handle. He’s as at-home with my book and its characters as Butch Cassidy was on the Outlaw Trail.”
No casting or network has been announced yet. “Much of the book and the adventures of The Sundance Kid (Cassidy’s partner Harry Longabaugh) and the ‘Wild Bunch’ gang takes place in South America. During that time period, Butch Cassidy and his gang were more well-known there than in North America. This isn’t just an American Western story, but a Latin American story, and it needs to be told. There are so many aspects of this story that will excite the audiences of today,” Steindorff said.
And because of where the action takes place, Stone Village is tailoring the tale to the Latin American market. The studio was founded in 1998. Its other current projects include adaptations of Mary Shelley’s horror classic, Frankenstein, and Emily St. John Mandel’s pandemic-themed book, Station Eleven.