3.10 To Yuma is back on track

Somewhere in LA, Walk The Line director James Mangold is breathing a big, happy sigh of relief. Because his remake of the Western crime drama 3.10 To Yuma has found itself a new siding.

After years of development at Sony, the film was shoved into turnaround earlier in the year when budget and casting issues couldn’t be worked out. Plenty of top-name talent like Tom Cruise and Eric Bana had been considering jumping aboard, but nothing seemed to click. And despite Russell Crowe agreeing to take part, the film still went into limbo.

After some time spent trying to sell the project around other studios, Mangold has finally found his saviour in Relativity Media, which has agreed to stump up all or part of the money, and is busy looking for a financial partner and a distributor.

Crowe is still on board and will play the part of outlaw Ben Wade, played by Glenn Ford in the 1957 original. Christian Bale is apparently inches from a deal to play rancher Dan Evans, who is on a mission to take the criminal to court via the titular train. But things don’t go as smoothly for Evans as he’d like.

There’s no sign yet of when Mangold will be able to get moving on the film – Crowe is busy with American Gangster, and Bale would have to find time in his diary between Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There and shooting Batman: The Dark Knight.

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