Paul Schrader Wants To Follow ‘First Reformed’ With A Western Starring Ethan Hawke And Willem Dafoe
Paul Schraderhas never gone away, but his career is encountering a sudden upswing thanks to his acclaimed 2018 filmFirst Reformed. So what’s next for Schrader? According to the man himself, he wants to make a Western calledNine Men from Now, and he hopesEthan HawkeandWillem Dafoewill star. Those details alone are enough to pique my interest.
During an impromptu interview at the Critics' Choice Awards, Paul Schrader dropped some info on his potential next project:
Also spoke with Paul Schrader fresh off his#CriticsChoiceAwardsoriginal screenplay win, told me he’s writing a western titled NINE MEN FROM NOW with Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe as its two leads
— EW (@ErickWeber)Jun 20, 2025
If you ask me, just knowing that this new film could be a Paul Schrader Western featuring Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe is enough to get my excited. But if you’d like a little more info on justwhatthis project is, I did some digging, and IthinkI might have the answer.
Back in 1988, Schrader had a screenplay that had two possible titles: one wasVengeance, the other wasNine Men from Now. According to Schrader’sown personal papers, the script was “adapted from film scriptSeven Men from Nowby Burt Kennedy.”
Seven Men from Nowis a 1956 Western from John Wayne’s production company. Here’s the synopsis:
Here’s a trailer,
Seven Men From Now
Does this mean Schrader is making a remake ofSeven Men? My guess is yes – the tale of revenge sounds like something Schrader can mine for the type of existential drama he specializes in. Schrader wrote aboutSeven Men from Nowin a 2000 issue ofFilm Comment.
“Seven Men from Nowis, for me, the quintessential Western not because it is typical, but because it is emblematic,” the filmmaker wrote. “[Director Budd] Boetticher was deeply invested in the symbolic hero, as epitomized by the bullfighter The director was, for a time, a bullfighter himself. He saw his protagonists as matadors: alone in the hot sun, figures of grace and style surrounded by noise and danger.”
Schrader also mentioned a project with Hawke and Dafoe in the past toDeadline, without giving the title:
“I have a project I’m working on for both Ethan and Willem [Dafoe], and one character is like Randolph Scott, the righteous lawman, and the other character is the slinky antagonist, the weasel. And so I was thinking, Ethan and Willem have both played both. They’ve both been an upright, they’ve both been weasels. So, which one should play which? Then I realized I could have it both ways, start Ethan out as the righteous one, Willem as the reprobate, and then at the beginning of the third act, flip ‘em. So, all of a sudden, nobody in the story actually knows it, but all of a sudden they are playing the opposite roles. Now, I couldn’t do that with an actor who can only really play himself.”
Throwing Hawke and Dafoe into the mix only makes this whole idea sound more appealing.First Reformedshowed how well Schrader could work with Hawke. And the writer-director has worked with Dafoe several times before, most recently in 2016’s nastyDog Eat Dog. It’s worth noting that this is all talk for now. There’s been no formal announcement aboutNine Men from Now, no studio is attached, and Hawke and Dafoe haven’t signed any contracts. Schrader is experiencing a lot of renewed interest in his work, though, and hopefully he’ll be able to get this film made.
