John Hillcoat's Blood Meridian

Some Thoughts on the Forthcoming Film Adaptation

In April of 2023, film industry magazines published the news that director John Hillcoat (Lawless, The Road) would be helming an adaptation of Blood Meridian with Cormac McCarthy writing the screenplay himself. Unfortunately, McCarthy died two months later on June 13th.

I corresponded with Mr. Hillcoat to arrange an interview for The Spectator. I won’t disclose our conversations, but he confirmed that the project was still going forward and in April of this year, John Logan was announced as the film’s new screenwriter.

Logan seems like a solid choice to me: he penned the scripts for big budget epics such as Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai, though adapting McCarthy’s masterpiece will likely prove his toughest challenge yet.

I’ve been vocal about my belief that a Blood Meridian adaption ought to be an eight-part miniseries and that a beautifully-animated rendering of McCarthy’s novel would skirt many of the pitfalls of bringing that hyper-violent novel to cinematic life: The Blood Meridian Adaptation Should Be Animated

To my knowledge, Hillcoat’s adaptation hasn’t yet been cast. Below is my dream cast:

Glanton: Josh Brolin

The Judge: Tom Hardy

Toadvine: Billy Bob Thornton

Tobin: Brad Dourif

Black Jackson: Dennis Haysbert

David Brown: W. Earl Brown

Speyer Christoph Waltz

Doc Irving: Garret Dillahunt

Sproule: Timothy Chalamet

Captain White: Austin Butler

Governor Trias: Javier Bardem

Bathcat: Karl Urban

The notable omission is, of course, the Kid. This will be the most difficult part to cast—how to find a young male actor who can credibly channel that strange blend of stoic bloodlust, masculine competence, and mercy?

Lucas Black could have played the Kid beautifully twenty-five years ago, but Mr. Black is now in his forties. Likely, Hillcoat will cast an unknown, a move that carries serious risk as studio executives are likely to balk at the idea of selecting an actor with no name recognition to portray the protagonist of a film that could cost $100 million.

I will say that John Hillcoat seems the perfect choice to bring Cormac’s novel to the screen. When I first saw Hillcoat’s spectacular Western, The Proposition (2005), I turned to a friend and said, “We’ve found our director.” If you haven’t seen that film, I strongly recommend logging off and doing so immediately.

I plan to update this post as more information comes to me.

Until then, we ride on.