Amy Madigan has been cast alongside Adaptation star Chris Cooper in I Passed This Way.
Amy Madigan and Chris Cooper have been cast in new Western, I Passed This Way.
The Weapons star and Adaptation actor will star opposite each other in Passion Fish and Lone Star director John Sayles’ first feature film in over a decade.
As reported by Variety, production for the movie is set to get underway in the final quarter of 2026.
Sayles has penned the screenplay for I Passed This Way, which is set in 1898 and focuses on cowboy Ross McEwen, who goes on the run across the New Mexico Territory after impulsively robbing a bank.
He’s being chased by lawman Pat Garrett and his young deputy, but McEwen faces a tough choice after hiding out at a remote homestead which has been hit by diphtheria.
He finds him having to decide between leaving the family to die but securing his escape to Mexico, or helping them but facing jail time if he’s caught.
The movie is based on Eugene Manlove Rhodes’ Paso Por Aqui, which was published as a novella in 1927, but first serialised in the Saturday Evening Post.
Sayles, whose film will be shot in the Canary Islands and Almería, Spain, first came across the novella during Donald Trump’s first administration.
He told Variety that he turned to the book “when the president and the media forces who conspired to put him in power were appealing to our citizens’ worst characteristics – fear, racism, the idea that being a superpower justified any behaviour”.
He has also long been a fan of Westerns, particularly their “moral core” as the stories are “often valuing ‘justice’ over ‘law’ and presenting their protagonists with tough decisions”.
Sayles added: “I think these movies are important in developing the best aspects of the America character, and I think I Passed This Way will be both a very welcome and useful movie to audiences around the world.”
Madigan’s casting in the movie comes after she delighted and terrified audiences as the enigmatic Aunt Gladys in last year’s horror blockbuster, Weapons.
The horror flick – which stars Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich and Benedict Wong – follows a group of strangers whose lives violently intersect after a class of children mysteriously vanish at 2:17am exactly.
Madigan’s performance as Aunt Gladys was a huge hit with fans, which convinced director Zach Cregger to develop an origin film for the mysterious villain.
Speaking with The Wrap about whether the Aunt Gladys prequel might lessen the mystique of the character, he said: “It’s crossed my mind.
“But I think that the Gladys story is such an interesting story that I think it’s going to feel very separate and stand on its own two feet, and I don’t think it’s going to diminish Weapons.”
Weapons star Amy Madigan cast in John Sayles’ bold Western
