Prime Video Rebooting Classic Steve McQueen Movie as TV Show

The Magnificent Seven will ride again, this time under the leadership of True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto. The writer, who worked on the 2016 remake, signed on to reimagine the classic Western franchise as a TV series for Amazon’s Prime Video. The original Magnificent Seven hit theaters in 1960 and featured Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.

Pizzolatto signed on to develop an original Western series for Amazon in March. The untitled project was centered around a “former outlaw who must reckon with a threat from his past in order to keep the life and family he has worked so hard to build,” sources told Variety at the time. The project morphed into a TV adaptation of The Magnificent Seven, Variety reported on April 24.

“In the tradition of the great epics from the golden age of westerns, an outlaw and his cohorts must unite a disparate band of indelible fighters to defend a settlement of immigrant homesteaders in an open range war against cattle barons in central Texas, telling an expansive saga of adventure, action, and romance,” reads the logline for the project. Pizzolatto will write the series for Amazon Studios. Mark Johnson, Lawrence Mirisch, Bruce Kaufman, and Pizolatto serve as executive producers.

The Magnificent Seven is a Western remake of the iconic Akira Kurosawa film Seven Samurai. Brynner starred as Chris Adams, who recruits six other gunmen to help a Mexican village being attacked by bandits. The film was directed by John Sturges and written by William Roberts. It was such a massive hit that three sequels followed between 1966 and 1972. CBS aired a series starring Michael Biehn and Ron Perlman between 1998 and 2000. Director Antoine Fuqua and writers Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk remade the movie in 2016, with Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt. Although the remake grossed $162.4 million, it earned mixed reviews, and no sequels were produced.

Amazon now owns the MGM library and has been busy mining the IPs for potential series ideas, like The Magnificent Seven show. Amazon acquired MGM in 2022 and is reportedly working on Robobcop and Barbershop projects as well. There are also rumors that Amazon is working with Michael B. Jordan to expand the Creed franchise following the success of Creed III.

Pizzolatto is best known for creating HBO’s True Detective. The first season with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson earned critical acclaim, and Pizzolatto picked up three 2014 Emmy nominations. He worked on the second and third seasons of True Detective before moving on. He is not directly involved in the upcoming fourth season starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. Pizzolatto also worked on the script for Marvel’s Blade, which hits theaters in September 2024.