Over the past few years, moviegoers have become rather reticent to remakes, but what about an unexpected sequel to a film classic? One of the nicest surprises at this years’s Tribeca Film Festival was Mateo Gil’s Blackthorn, which just happened to be an unexpected sequel to George Hill’s 1969 Western classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, working under the plot device that they didn’t really die at the end of that movie.
It stars Sam Shepard as Butch Cassidy, now living as a rancher in Bolivia under the name James Blackthorn who is now ready to return to the States, plans that get derailed when he encounters a Spaniard, played by Eduardo Noriega, who has come upon a large sum of money stolen from a mining company.
ComingSoon.net is premiering an exclusive clip that shows a pivotal moment in the film when Shepard’s James Blackthorn is confronted by a couple of local women returning his horse, but actually there to get their hands on the Spaniard who stole the money.
Blackthorn will be premiering on Video on Demand on Friday, September 2, but if you like what you see, we highly recommend seeing it in theaters because the locations in South America where Gil shot the film are absolutely glorious on the big screen. It will open in New York and Los Angeles on October 7 and in other theaters in the weeks that follow. (You can see the full theatrical release schedule here.)
Look for our interview with director Mateo Gil, a frequent collaborator of Alejandro Amenabar, including the Oscar-winning The Sea Inside, sometime before then.
