Clint Eastwood almost made a supernatural Western movie with one of Hollywood’s most gothic directors. Eastwood is no stranger to revisionist Westerns, and he has appeared in more than one with a supernatural bend. He is also someone who changed Westerns for the better when he helped popularize the antihero in the genre.
At one time, Eastwood almost teamed up with one of the most gothic directors in Hollywood, and the idea of what could have been remains something fans can only dream about. Director Tim Burton attached himself to adapt the supernatural Western novel The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, and he had Eastwood sign to star in it.
This seems almost unheard of. While Eastwood has appeared in some weird movies over his career, he has never appeared in anything like a Tim Burton movie. Gothic horror and Clint Eastwood seem almost like a fever dream combination, and imagining the actor appearing in something as bizarre as The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is intriguing.
Tim Burton Wanted To Adapt The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western With Clint Eastwood
The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is a novel by author Richard Brautigan about two gunslingers hired by a young woman to kill a monster. Set in Oregon in 1902, a Native American woman called Magic Child claims the monster lives in the ice caves under her house and killed her father. When the two gunslingers find the monster, it is very different than what they expected.
This would have played perfectly with Clint Eastwood’s Western antihero persona, as the gunslingers are morally ambivalent. However, the story takes some bizarre turns, which would put it right in the wheelhouse of a director like Burton.
The story moves on to reveal that Magic Child was one of two twin sisters, and they bring the two gunslingers into a situation where there isn’t an actual monster under the house, but a little more sci-fi horror in its flavor. If anything, it’s almost more of a story someone like Sam Raimi or Stuart Gordon might direct, rather than Tim Burton.
Burton was not only attached to direct this supernatural Western, but he had two of Hollywood’s most legendary actors attached with him. Jack Nicholson was meant to play the other gunslinger alongside Eastwood. In fact, Nicholson was attached before Burton, when Hal Ashby was supposed to direct the film.
Brautigan wrote a script for Ashby, but the director wasn’t happy with it. Sadly, Burton also couldn’t get the script into a place where either Eastwood or Nicholson felt comfortable with the project. Both actors ended up leaving the production, and the director finally followed suit.
Clint Eastwood Had A History With Supernatural Westerns
This project wouldn’t have been entirely new territory for Clint Eastwood, since the Hollywood icon has appeared in some supernatural Westerns in the past. That said, nothing he has ever done is as weird as The Hawkline Monster, and this is an actor who once had an orangutan co-star. Eastwood’s other supernatural Westerns were a little more demonic.
In 1973, Clint Eastwood starred as The Stranger in High Plains Drifter. In this movie, he played a man who comes into town and begins terrorizing people there. He does some terrible things when he arrives, and he immediately targets the evil people in the town. By the end, it turned out that The Stranger might have been a murdered lawman, returned as a spirit of vengeance.
A decade later, he starred as the personification of Death in Pale Rider. This time, it wasn’t merely hinted at: Eastwood made it clear that he was Death as he sought to bring justice to a lawless Wild West town. When talking about the movie, Eastwood confirmed he was an