COWBOYS FOR CHRIST The second film in The Wicker Man Trilogy.

NEITHER a PREQUEL or a SEQUEL, nor a RE-MAKE, COWBOYS FOR CHRIST on May Day is to be the SECOND FILM in what may be called THE WICKER MAN TRILOGY.

Robin Hardy, author, screenwriter and film director designate of Cowboys for Christ and director of the original The Wicker Man film as well as co-author of the novel of the same name…. lays some media rumours and canards to rest :

Principally :Why is Robin Hardy remaking his own film, The Wicker Man ?

He is NOT remaking The Wicker Man. Who ever remade a film they have already directed? A re-make of The Wicker Man, however, written and directed by Neil LaBute, was released in 2006. Nicolas Cage starred in the role created by Edward Woodward in the original film. No-one involved in Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man was in any way involved in the ‘re-make’. At one point the Producers of the re-make had (or allowed) Robin Hardy’s name to appear next to that of Neil LaBute, as co-writer, in the Hollywood trade paper listings. It took a considerable number of e-mails from Robin and his lawyers to the re-make’s producers to ensure that his name was removed.

Relying on the box-office potency of Nicolas Cage’s name world-wide, the re-make of The Wicker Man did not actually lose money, but it was slaughtered by the critics both sides of the Atlantic. Some pointed out that it had been robbed of the humour, the sexiness and, most importantly, the beautiful music ( much of it based on Robert Burns’ songs ) of the original and as a result the horror, when it came, was pure bathos.

Robin Hardy’s Cowboys for Christ, a novel which Christopher Lee describes as “ Erotic, romantic, comic and horrific enough to loosen the bowels of a bronze statue,” was written partly to serve as the basis for the second film in a trilogy where The Wicker Man has led the way. The third film, “The Twilight of The Gods”, to be set in Burbank, California and Iceland
will close the trilogy with a sensational re-imagining of the last act of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle”.

The Wicker Man, after its theatrical triumph in the USA in 1979-80, became a huge success in the English-speaking TV market and, in recent years , spectacularly profitable in video and, later, in DVD. So with a substantial fan base for The Wicker Man to which must be added Christopher Lee’s impressive following world-wide, there clearly exists a ready audience for films in this highly original genre – for Cowboys for Christ and, later on, for The Twilight of the Gods.

Some journalists who may not have read any of the relevant material have reported that Cowboys for Christ is a remake of The Wicker Man. This is incorrect. Is Bad Day at Black Rock a remake of Shane or High Noon or vice versa ? They are ALL excellent Cowboy Movies. So are dozens of other Cowboy films inhabiting the same territory. Theirs was a hugely successful genre of motion picture, complete with it’s own recognisable iconography. We believe that each film in our Wicker Man trilogy will confirm that the genre we have created is as beguiling as the inhabitants and landscape in the three films that make up The Lord of the Rings or the three films that are the ‘Godfather’ series. Hugely different obviously, but equally unique.

The originality of The Wicker Man, it’s occasional use of songs to virtually narrate the story, but well short of making the film a ‘musical’, its use of eroticism and humour, it’s avoidance of blood or gruesome detail, but reliance on the audience’s imagination to convey horror – all these elements defied accepted formulae making every studio ‘pass’ on the screenplay in the nineteen seventies. It was left to Christopher Lee and Robin Hardy to arrange the highly successful distribution of the film in America. ‘ What is it ?’ the Sales and Marketing departments of the Studios asked. “ How can it be a horror film with all those jokes ? Where is the blood ? Why is there no scary music instead of those cute folk songs ?” But after Cinefantastique, a leading Hollywood film magazine, called it The Citizen Kane of Horror Films and devoted a whole issue to it, the film started to break cinema ‘house’ records from Boston to San Francisco. People started to ‘get it’ and critics and audiences have been ‘getting it’ ever since. They will ‘get it’ with Cowboys for Christ; we just have to be persistent and make the film. Then the audience will laugh and cry and, many of them, find themselves still shuddering as they leave the cinema

Our current experience with Cowboys for Christ has been similar to that which confronted us with The Wicker Man in the seventies. Plus - it has been necessary to finance the film with disparate equity investments. One of these investors, putting up £750,000 ( $ 1.5m ), appears to have been wiped out by the current Credit Crunch leaving us, within two weeks of starting to shoot, to replace his investment. This naturally led to our producers ( Peter Watson-Wood and Alastair Gourlay ) to postpone the production till we have closed the gap. Replacing this money in the current financial climate will not be easy but investors are trickling in from both sides of the Atlantic. We are determined to make Cowboys for Christ – very soon.