{"id":376703,"date":"2026-09-02T02:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=376703"},"modified":"2026-09-30T08:50:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:50:32","slug":"ridley-scott-nearly-made-an-ultra-violent-western-drew-goddard-was-adapting-zahlers-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/ridley-scott-nearly-made-an-ultra-violent-western-drew-goddard-was-adapting-zahlers-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Ridley Scott nearly made an ultra-violent Western: Drew Goddard was adapting Zahler\u2019s novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

20th Century Fox announced Wraiths of the Broken Land in 2016<\/strong>, not long after The Martian, with Ridley Scott lined up to direct and Drew Goddard brought in to adapt S. Craig Zahler\u2019s 2013 novel. The movie never happened, but the setup was hard to ignore: a turn-of-the-20th-century border story about men trying to save their sisters after they\u2019re sold into prostitution. What gave it its edge, though, was the tone. This wasn\u2019t just a rescue story. It was a vicious frontier nightmare, pulling together Western, horror, noir, and exploitation-level violence.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n \"IMDb\"\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n IMDb<\/span>\r\n Download<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/path><\/path><\/text><\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

On paper, Scott made a lot of sense for it. He\u2019d already shown he could handle that kind of punishing historical force<\/strong> in Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and later The Last Duel. Goddard, meanwhile, had already built a reputation as one of Hollywood\u2019s more flexible genre writers.<\/p>\n\n

Zahler\u2019s name also gave the project some bite. His work already carried a reputation for being grim and genuinely shocking<\/strong>, something audiences later saw on screen in Bone Tomahawk. At the same time, Zahler himself suggested the novel might simply be too sprawling to fit into a single film.<\/p>\n\n

So if you liked the idea of Scott taking on a savage revisionist Western, this was one of those lost projects that stuck in the mind.<\/p>\n\n

You can\u2019t stream or download Wraiths of the Broken Land anywhere, though, because it seems to have vanished into development hell<\/a><\/strong>, caught between Scott and Goddard\u2019s schedules, worries that the book was too big for one movie, and Disney\u2019s takeover of 20th Century Fox.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20th Century Fox announced Wraiths of the Broken Land in 2016, not long after The Martian, with Ridley Scott lined up to direct and Drew Goddard brought in to adapt S. Craig Zahler\u2019s 2013 novel. The movie never happened, but the setup was hard to ignore: a turn-of-the-20th-century border story about men trying to save … Continue reading “Ridley Scott nearly made an ultra-violent Western: Drew Goddard was adapting Zahler\u2019s novel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9336,"featured_media":376702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6869],"class_list":["post-376703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-streaming-videos"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376704,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376703\/revisions\/376704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376703"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=376703"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=376703"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=376703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}