Last year, we reported that The Discovery Channel was working with Robert Redford on a docu-drama called The West that would tell the stories of a bunch of famous cowboy dudes from the 40-or-so years in between the end of the Civil War and the start of the 20th century. As evidenced by the fact that you never bought a DVD copy of The West for your grandfather, though, nothing ever came of it. Now, Variety is reporting that AMC has picked up the project and scheduled it to premiere next summer.
We also know a little bit more about The West, and it sounds like the eight-part series will lean a little harder on the “docu” side of docu-drama. In addition to telling the “little-known true stories” of guys like Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull (at least in the sense that any true stories about them are little-known, because they’re all super famous), the series will also feature interviews with famous actors who have appeared in Westerns, including James Caan, Tom Selleck, Kiefer Sutherland, and Ed Harris. Hopefully, the actors will also be telling their own “little-known true stories,” because it would be a really funny juxtaposition to have a segment about Jesse James murdering somebody paired up with Ed Harris talking about appearing in National Treasure: Book Of Secrets.