Park Chan-Wook’s Western Lands at Clockwork With A-List Cast

Twenty years after S. Craig Zahler’s script first wowed Hollywood insiders, The Brigands of Rattlecreek is finally becoming a movie — and it’s coming with one of the most exciting director-cast combinations in recent memory.

Warner Bros.’ new specialty label Clockwork is in exclusive negotiations for North American rights to the film, with a deal reportedly landing somewhere in the mid-teen millions. Park Chan-Wook, the South Korean auteur behind Oldboy and The Handmaiden, is directing. And starring opposite him: Matthew McConaughey, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal, and Tang Wei. Production is set to kick off in the first quarter of 2027, with a budget north of $60 million.

The project has been a long time coming — and that’s an understatement. Zahler’s screenplay topped the Black List in 2006, back when Park was still riding the international wave of Oldboy‘s acclaim. In the years since, Zahler went on to become a director in his own right, delivering viscerally brutal genre films like Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete. Meanwhile, the Western sat in development limbo — Amazon had the rights as recently as 2019 and was eyeing McConaughey even then. Now, nearly two decades after the script first circulated, it’s actually happening.

Park has done his own revisions to Zahler’s original screenplay, and the story he’s bringing to the screen is described as a classic tale of revenge: a sheriff and a doctor hunt down a group of bandits who terrorize a small town during a torrential thunderstorm. But it’s being positioned as something much bigger than a straightforward genre exercise. According to the film’s synopsis, it’s “a capstone of the themes Park Chan-Wook has plumbed across his entire body of work to date” — “an emotionally explosive and visually stunning meditation on the consequences of violence, the value of family, the power of memory, and the true cost of life.”

In other words: this is a Park Chan-Wook film first, a Western second.

A Cast That Makes You Pay Attention

McConaughey, Butler, Pascal, and Tang Wei together on a single project is the kind of lineup that makes people stop scrolling. Butler has been on a serious trajectory since Elvis. Pascal is coming off his run as Reed Richards in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. And Tang Wei has a direct connection to Park — she starred in his most recent film, the darkly comedic Venice entry No Other Choice, which earned three Golden Globe nominations. That Park is bringing her back into the fold here feels intentional, a sign of a director who knows exactly who he wants around him.

McConaughey’s attachment, meanwhile, has been part of this project’s DNA for years. That he’s still here — still committed after nearly a decade of the film being in various states of almost-happening — says something about how good that script must be.

Clockwork Is Moving Fast

For Clockwork, the fledgling Warner Bros. label led by former Neon executive Christian Parkes, landing Brigands is a serious statement of intent. The label only announced its first acquisition — Sean Baker’s Ti Amo!, the follow-up to his Oscar-winning Anora — at CinemaCon in April. Now, barely a month later, it’s closing in on one of the most anticipated arthouse-blockbuster crossovers in years. The label is also releasing a restored version of Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils after its Cannes premiere, with a select theatrical run planned for October.

On the business side, WME Independent and CAA Media Finance handled the deal with Clockwork at the Cannes Film Market. Patrick Wachsberger’s Legendary label 193 is managing international sales. The film is being produced by Bradley Fischer of Wise Owl alongside Park through his Moho Film banner, with Jisun Back, Mike Medavoy, and Georgia Kacandes serving as executive producers.

Park Chan-Wook is currently serving as jury president at Cannes — so he’s already in the room where it all happens. With The Brigands of Rattlecreek now finding its home, the wait that started back in 2006 is almost over. Early 2027 can’t come fast enough.