'The Hawkline Monster' Will Be A Gothic Western From 'The Favourite' Director Yorgos Lanthimos

The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos has a new project lined up, and it sounds amazing. Lanthimos is in talks to direct The Hawkline Monster, a gothic western based on the novel by Richard Brautigan. The story concerns two gunslingers who are hired by a young girl to kill a monster, and both Hal Ashby and Tim Burton both attempted to adapt the book to film in the past.THR has the news on The Hawkline Monster, stating that Lanthimos is in talks to helm for New Regency. Hal Ashby, director of Being There and more, originally wanted to adapt Richard Brautigan's novel to the screen in the 1970s and 80s, and even had Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman set to star. But Brautigan didn't care for Ashby's take on the material, and the project was never realized. Tim Burton was the next filmmaker who attempted to adapt the book, and Burton wanted Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson to lead the film. But again, this never got off the ground. Now Lanthimos hopes to succeed where others have failed.

According to the book's synopsis, The Hawkline Monster is set in eastern Oregon in 1902. In the story, "Magic Child, a fifteen-year-old Indian girl, wanders into the wrong whorehouse looking for the right men to kill the monster that lives in the ice caves under the basement of Miss Hawkline's yellow house. What follows is a series of wild, witty, and bizarre encounters."

There's a ton of potential here, and I'm always up for a horror-western – a subgenre that doesn't get explored nearly as often as it should. Having Lanthimos direct is an inspired choice, as the filmmaker has a distinct voice that will likely turn whatever adaptation he makes into something worth paying attention to. I'll confess that I'm not a huge fan of a lot of Lanthimos' work, but I absolutely loved his most recent movie The Favourite. Based on the strength of that alone, I look forward to seeing whatever he does next.

Lanthimos is also supposed to helm a TV adaptation of the true crime story The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, so it's not entirely clear when he'll be making The Hawkline Monster.