Sam Raimi directs futuristic WYATT EARP?

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

THR says Sam Raimi has attached himself to what basically amounts to a re-telling of the famous Wyatt Earp legend -- the Gunfight at OK Coral, Doc. Holliday, Virgil and all that -- but set in a futuristic, 'ravaged society' Los Angeles - where the economy has dipped so much that people shoot each other over a loaf of bread. It's based on the Radical Studios three issue comic series 'Earp: Saints for Sinners', and is setup at Dreamworks. It'll be his first Western thematic movie since The Quick and the Dead 15 years ago. After some googling, I found a great interview at Comic Book Resources with writer M. Zachary Sherman who says the project is about;

The depths to which man will go to fight for what he believes in. I'm not saying it's right, but we're seeing it today. Americans blowing up IRS buildings, people bulldozing their own homes so the banks can't repossess them - life comes to a head and sometimes you need to fight for you and yours. That's what this book is about - good men pushed to the brink and fighting to maintain their dignity and honor.

Co-creator Matt Cirulnick will write the script and by all intents and purposes, it sounds like it's literary form was just the testing ground to see if it had legs for a movie. Obviously, they decided it has. This comics-then-films strategy is something they are trying with Sam Worthington too. Maybe he'll play Earp? Bottom line is this project sounds infinitely more appealing than Raimi directing a Burton-esque Wizard of Oz prequel for Disney next summer, and if he can fit this one in before his paycheck deal and deliver a genre heavy, balls-to-the-wall actioner for his loyal fans, like he did with Drag Me To Hell, then we would be delighted.