Pen To Paper: a Wild Bunch remake, Willis goes crim, Baldwin gets smart

Next up on the Tinseltown remake conveyer belt is Uncle Sam’s classic western The Wild Bunch. David Ayer (Training Day, Dark Blue) has already penned the script, transplanting Peckinpah’s original, which starred William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, from the Old West to modern-day Mexico and replacing its ageing gunslingers with CIA agents and drug cartels. Peckinpah’s masterpiece in the hands of the man who wrote SWAT? We’d say Lord help us but let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt.

Talk about throwing yourself into your work. Having recently completed shooting on Richard Donner’s comedy-actioner 16 Blocks opposite Mos Def, Bruce Willis has signed on to star in Black Water Transit. Based on the novel by Carsten Stroud, the thriller centres on events surrounding a shipment of illegal firearms, a grisly double murder and the effects both crimes have on the criminals, cops and lawyers involved. Bruce is down to play Earl Pike, a crim desperately trying to conceal his family’s collection of illegal guns. Shooting is slated to kick off in March 2006.

Another actor racking up the overtime is eldest member of the Baldwin acting clan, Alec. Big Al has signed to star opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Girls’ Guide To Hunting And Fishing, an adaptation of Melissa Banks’ short story compilation about an older publishing chief who wins the heart of an ambitious young book editor. Serendipity screenwriter Marc Klein will write and make his directorial debut.