Director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven has found its villain today as Variety reports that Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead, Green Lantern) has signed on to play the story’s chief antagonist. He joins Denzel Washington (who took home an Oscar for Fuqua’s Training Day), Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Chris Pratt, The Equalizer‘s Haley Bennett, Boyhood‘s Ethan Hawke, Elite Squad‘s Wagner Moura, G.I. Joe: Retaliation‘s Byung-hun Lee, “White Collar’s” Matt Bomer and “Marvel’s Daredevil” star Vincent D’Onofrio.
Originally drafted by “True Detective” scribe Nic Pizzolatto (since rewritten by The Blind Side‘s John Lee Hancock), The Magnificent Seven will remake the 1960 film directed by John Sturges that itself was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai. Sturges’ version starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn as a group of disparate gunmen who come together to protect a Mexican village from bandits led by Eli Wallach. It led to a number of sequels as well as a CBS television series.
The new film is said to feature a victimized mining town, taken over by a gold baron (Sarsgaard), rather than the Mexican village of the original.
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