Alexander Payne is currently working on a western with ‘Holdovers’ screenwriter David Hemingson. Earlier in the year, Hemingson revealed that a part has been written for Payne’s ‘Holdovers’ star Paul Giamatti.
Speaking at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday, Payne shed some light on his next project, explaining that he always wanted to tackle the Western genre.
“The one genre I’ve wanted to do is a Western,” said Payne. “So, right now while Jim [Taylor] and I are talking about a sequel to Election, with a different writer – the guy who wrote The Holdovers [David Hemingson], we have been conceiving a Western for years now.”
He added: “It would be nice to take a kind of realistic-slash-naturalistic approach to a Western and also using landscape. In as much as sense of place is important…part of my interest is having even greater dramatic, archetypical interplay between character and landscape. I think it’s really interesting”.
The current inspirations for the project are Anthony Mann’s films, the director who made several westerns with James Stewart in the 1950s including “Winchester ’73” and “Bend of the River.” “You can really study the connections between the characters and the drama in the foreground; and how the shifting landscape reflects the story,” said Payne, adding that “a sense of place, using landscape, is important to the films I do.”
Hemingson is co-writing the screenplay with Payne. The film is set in Nebraska in 1886. No production start date was revealed. This would be Giamatti’s third collaboration with Payne after 2004’s “Sideways” and last year’s “The Holdovers.”
Payne, the director of “Election,” “Sideways” and “Nebraska,” also confirmed that he’s working with co-writer Jim Taylor on a sequel to 1999’s “Election.” Although, don’t get too excited, the project is still in the early stages of development and won’t be going into production any time soon,
“Jim Taylor and I are conceiving what the sequel would look like now,” said Payne.
The sequel, based on the 2022 novel “Tracy Flick Can’t Win,” would again star Reese Whitherspoon, and is currently being conceived as a streaming Paramount+ release. I have no doubt in my mind that if Payne makes a great film, then it stands a good chance to being switched over to theatrical.