Butch and Sundance will ride again in a new TV series.
The 19th century desperadoes, made famous in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, are the inspiration for a series of the same title, the Hollywood Reporter revealed Friday. The series will be based on Charles Leerhsen’s 2020 biography, Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw.
According to the report, producer Scott Steindorff plans to emphasize the pair’s travels in Latin and South America, to better appeal to a wider viewing audience. The two traveled from the American West to Chile and Bolivia during a years-long spree of bank and train robberies. “This isn’t just an American Western story, but a Latin American story, and it needs to be told,” Steindorff said. “There are so many aspects of this story that will excite the audiences of today.”
Leerhsen praised Steindorff’s involvement with the project, telling the Hollywood Reporter that “He’s as at-home with my book and its characters as Butch Cassidy was on the Outlaw Trail.”
The show is being pitched to cable and streaming outlets as a limited series, according to the report. A production company also attached to the project, Stone Village Television, is involved in other literary adaptations, including one of Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 dystopian novel, Station Eleven, and Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix who writes about books for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
