When last we checked in on Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington’s remake of the classic 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven, the film was busy signing on newly minted action hero Chris Pratt to co-star. Now, Fuqua and Washington have found their female lead, and it seems they didn’t have to look far. Deadline reports that Haley Bennett, who appeared with Washington in last year’s Fuqua-helmed The Equalizer, has joined the cast of the upcoming MGM film.
Normally our first order of business would be to mock the decision to remake one of the greatest Westerns ever made, but given that the original film was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, we’ll keep an open mind for now. (The A.V. Club’s newswire headline from 1959 reads, “United Artists foolishly decides to fuck with Kurosawa’s masterpiece, like a bunch of morons”.) As in the original film, a town is taken over a ruthless baron and his thugs. Bennett will play a widow who hires Washington’s bounty hunter and six others to rid the town of the baron and his men.
Along with this latest casting, Bennett has quite the packed Google Calendar coming up. She’s been filming Warren Beatty’s untitled Howard Hughes film, is in the Terrence Malick project that was filming three years ago (not to be confused with Knight Of Cups, the other Malick project filmed years ago), and the upcoming Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel mystery, The Blunderer. That’s in addition to two other indie films coming out this year, one starring Aaron Paul, and the other Thomas Dekker. Save some for everyone else, Haley Bennett.