Butch Cassidy Rides Again — and Alone — in Blackthorn

If someone was ever going to make a sequel to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (even a “pseudo sequel”), you’d think Hollywood would be all over it. After all, since when has the town been against robbing the graves of a classic for cold hard cash? But before the suits at Lalaland can get their act together, the Spanish have beaten them to the punch. Arcadia Motion Pictures has announced a pseudo sequel to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, set 15 years after George Roy Hill’s 1969 classic starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, with Butch Cassidy alive and well and hiding out in Bolivia.

In the Spanish-funded and produced, but English-language Western “Blackthorn”, Sam Shepard will play the aging Butch Cassidy, who plots to finally return to the good ol USA after 15 years of everyone believing he had bit the bullet at the guns of the Bolivian army as told by legend. Alas, Cassidy’s plan to return home is thwarted when a trigger-happy cowboy played by Eduardo Noriega somehow loses Cassidy’s life savings, forcing the retired outlaw to do one final job to raise the necessary funds. Stephen Rea will play Cassidy’s nemesis, a railroad dick (in more ways than one, it would appear) who is still pining to capture Cassidy after 15 years, and who once again is on the outlaw’s trail.

“Blackthorn” will be set around 1910, and will be directed by Mateo Gil. A writer/director, Gil counts Alejandro Amenábar’s original “Open You Eyes” (remade into the Cameron Crowe movie “Vanilla Sky”) and Amanabar’s latest, “Agora” among his credits. He also previously directed the 1999 thriller “Nobody Knows”.

The film is set to shoot on location in Spain and Bolivia in March of 2010 with a $7.5 million budget.

Hey Butch, wait up! Buuuuuuuuuuuutch!