Legends Podcast

Ten years ago, 2015 was the year of the epic Western. Two films, Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, clocked in at an average length of 170 minutes and scored a combined 15 Academy Award nominations, winning 4 between them. As a pair, the two films brought in nearly $700 million at the box office. Along with John Maclean’s Sundance darling Slow West, the year marked a return to prominence of the western genre, foreshadowing the next decade’s breakout hits like Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone and Hell or High Water, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Slipping somewhat under the radar in 2015 was the directorial debut of S. Craig Zahler, a prolific author and screenwriter with a penchant for wit, grit, and gore. Zahler cast Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and Richard Jenkins in a Western akin to John Ford’s The Searchers by way of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. When townsfolk are kidnapped by a clan of troglodyte cannibals, four men - the sheri