Clint Eastwood Almost Worked With Hollywood’s Most Gothic Filmmaker For A Supernatural Western

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Clint Eastwood nearly starred in a Western with supernatural elements, directed by a famously dark and atmospheric filmmaker. While he’s known for challenging traditional Westerns, he’s also appeared in films that blend the genre with the supernatural. Eastwood is credited with evolving Westerns by helping to make complex, flawed characters – antiheroes – more common.

There was a point when Clint Eastwood nearly worked with Tim Burton, the famously dark and imaginative director. Burton planned to adapt the novel The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western and had already secured Eastwood for the lead role. Fans still wonder what that movie might have been like.

It’s surprising to think about Clint Eastwood in a Tim Burton film. While he’s been in some unusual movies, he’s never done anything quite like Burton’s style of gothic horror. The combination feels incredibly unexpected, and the idea of him starring in something as strange as The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western is really interesting.

Tim Burton Wanted To Adapt The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western With Clint Eastwood

Image by Everett Collection

Richard Brautigan’s The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western tells the story of two gunslingers who are hired by a young woman to slay a creature she believes is haunting her home. The novel is set in Oregon in 1902, and the woman, named Magic Child, insists the monster—which she believes killed her father—lives in ice caves beneath her house. However, when the gunslingers finally encounter the monster, it turns out to be nothing like they imagined.

The film’s themes would have been a great fit for Clint Eastwood’s classic, morally complex Western characters. However, the plot gets quite strange, and feels more suited to a director known for the unusual, like Tim Burton.

The story then reveals Magic Child had a twin sister, and the two sisters lead the gunslingers to a strange situation. It isn’t a typical monster-under-the-house scenario, but leans more towards science fiction horror. In fact, it feels less like something Tim Burton would create, and more in the style of directors like Sam Raimi or Stuart Gordon.

Tim Burton was eager to direct this Western with supernatural elements, and he quickly secured two iconic actors for the project. Jack Nicholson was originally slated to star opposite Clint Eastwood as the other gunslinger. Interestingly, Nicholson signed on even earlier, when a different director, Hal Ashby, was planned for the film.

Brautigan wrote a screenplay for Ashby, but the director didn’t think it worked. Later, Burton tried to revise it, hoping to attract either Eastwood or Nicholson, but neither actor was satisfied. Ultimately, both actors and the director left the project.

Clint Eastwood Had A History With Supernatural Westerns

Clint Eastwood wasn’t a stranger to Westerns with a supernatural element, having done similar projects before. However, The Hawkline Monster is definitely his strangest role yet – even considering he once acted alongside an orangutan! His previous forays into the supernatural West leaned more towards demonic themes.

In the 1973 film High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood played a mysterious stranger who arrives in a town and unleashes chaos. He quickly confronts and punishes the town’s villains, and it’s eventually revealed he may be the ghost of a lawman seeking revenge for his own murder.

Ten years after that, Eastwood played Death itself in the film Pale Rider. Unlike his previous roles, this time it was explicitly shown – Eastwood portrayed a supernatural being delivering justice to a chaotic Wild West town. He later stated he intentionally played the character as a complete and undeniable ghost in the movie.

Unlike those other movies, The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western would have featured Eastwood and Nicholson playing their roles seriously, even with a lot of strange and unusual events happening around them. Eastwood would have been ideal as the ‘straight man’ in the story, though it’s still a bit odd to picture him in that setting.

Bugonia Director Yorgos Lanthimos Also Wanted To Make This Movie

After Clint Eastwood moved on, another director, Yorgos Lanthimos—known for his 2025 film Bugonia—signed on to direct The Hawkline Monster in 2019. He was also collaborating with Tony McNamara, the creator of The Great, as a writer on the project.

Despite his talent, Yorgos Lanthimos wasn’t successful with this project, much like directors Tim Burton and Hal Ashby before him. Many believed Lanthimos was the perfect choice to adapt the story, given his critically acclaimed films. He’s known for both unique, cult hits like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Oscar-nominated favorites like The Favourite, Poor Things, and his newest film, Bugonia.

Although New Regency and Vertigo Entertainment initially supported the project, it ultimately fell through. Since then, the director has created films like Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Bugonia, and is currently working on adapting Jean-Patrick Manchette’s thriller Fatale. Despite interest from Tim Burton and Clint Eastwood, the project remains unfinished and isn’t expected to be completed anytime soon, with no progress anticipated by 2025.

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2025-12-09 01:01