The Big Picture
- Nick Nolte and Bill Murray team up for Ed Harris' neo-noir thriller The Ploughmen, set to film in Montana this fall.
- The film, based on Kim Zupan's novel, follows the bond between an aging killer and a young sheriff's deputy.
- Harris will direct and write the script for his third directorial project.
Nick Nolte and Bill Murray are set to star in The Ploughmen, Ed Harris' next feature as director. The film is a neo-noir thriller depicting the unlikely bond between an aging killer and a young sheriff's deputy. The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the film is slated to go into production in Montana this fall, and will be shopped at this month's upcoming Cannes Film Festival.
The Ploughmen will adapt Kim Zupan's 2014 novel of the same name, in which Nolte will play John Gload, a killer who's finally apprehended after a lifetime of violence. Put in jail by a small-town Montana sheriff (Murray), he has a conversation with Val Millimaki (Owen Teague, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), who's trying to find out where Gload has buried decades of bodies. The two men soon find they have more in common than they realize. The movie will be a family affair, with Harris' wife Amy Madigan (The Dark Half) and their daughter Lily Harris also set to star. The film has been in development for some time. In a 2017 Collider interview, Harris discussed acquiring the rights to the novel, and wanting Stacy Keach for the lead role. In 2021, the film was officially announced with Robert Duvall and Garrett Hedlund in the cast, with plans to film later that year; those plans did not come to fruition.
Who is Ed Harris?
The famously intense Harris broke out playing astronaut John Glenn in 1983's The Right Stuff. He has since earned acclaim for a number of films, including The Abyss, Apollo 13, The Truman Show, The Hours, and Top Gun: Maverick. In 2022, he wrapped up a four-season stint playing the mysterious Man in Black on HBO's adaptation of Westworld. He recently starred in the thriller Love Lies Bleeding, and is next slated to appear in the dramedy My Dead Friend Zoe, the crime comedy Riff Raff, and a new adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. The Ploughmen will be Harris' third film as director. His debut was 2000's Pollock, in which he also starred as abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. He followed it up with the 2008 Western Appaloosa, which he starred in alongside Viggo Mortensen.
In addition to directing The Ploughmen, Harris will also write the script. He will produce alongside Ginger Sledge, Robert Knott, and Claude Dal Farra and Brian Keady of BCDF Pictures.
The Ploughmen will film this fall, and is set to be shopped at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival; no release date has yet been set. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.