Director Elliott Lester’s edgy indie Western will be available only in theaters Sept. 6.
Billed as “an edge-of-your-seat thriller that reimagines the Western genre and immerses the audience into the harsh and unforgiving world of the West,” director Elliott Lester’s The Thicket is set to gallop into theaters Sept. 6 after screening as an official selection of the prestigious Deauville American Film Festival.
Multiple Emmy Award-winning actor Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) and Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actress Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear, Yellowjackets) star in the period drama, along with Esmé Creed-Miles (Hanna), Levon Hawke (Blink Twice), Macon Blair (I Care A Lot), Andrew Schulz (You People), James Hetfield (Metallica), David Midthunder (On Sacred Ground), Arliss Howard (Mank), Leslie Grace (In The Heights), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Old Man).
The template: “When fierce bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Dinklage) is recruited by a desperate man to track down a ruthless killer known only as Cutthroat Bill (Lewis), he rallies a band of unlikely heroes, including a grave-digging ex-slave and a street-smart woman-for-hire. Together they embark on a perilous quest to track down Cutthroat Bill that leads them into the deadly no-man’s-land known as…The Thicket.”
Lewis, daughter of the late character actor Geoffrey Lewis, told People Magazine that she viewed her Thicket performance as a tip of the Stetson to her father, who appeared in many Westerns throughout his decades-long career in film and television.
"Everything about filling this role reminded me of my father‘s legacy as a villain in one of the greatest Westerns, High Plains Drifter,” she said. “I pick up where he left off.”
Dinklage, who also serves as producer for The Thicket, described the film as “definitely a passion project of many years in the making for me,” telling People he considered it a classic Western tale “of settlement in a land without proper laws in place yet. A new beginning to a life on an unknown frontier.
"The Thicket captures that in the way Joseph Conrad did with Heart of Darkness. What’s down that unknown path? What are the consequences of that journey? And how will you ever return to anything you thought you once were?”
Here is the first official trailer for The Thicket.
