Bone Tomahawk. Although it wasn’t a massive hit on its initial release in 2015, in the decade since, Bone Tomahawk has become a beloved cult classic. It starts off as a typical Western, with a search party riding out into the frontier to find three missing townspeople, but it morphs into a gruesome horror film when they encounter a bloodthirsty tribe of cave-dwelling cannibals.
Bone Tomahawk marked the directorial debut of novelist S. Craig Zahler. Zahler has since gone on to direct similarly gruesome, violent thrillers like Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, but he’s never returned to the Western genre. So, Bone Tomahawk fans hoping to see another grisly, blood-drenched Western from Zahler’s twisted mind have had no luck. But there is a Zahler-adjacent Western project in development hell that would make for the perfect successor to Bone Tomahawk.
Wraiths Of The Broken Land Would Be Perfect After Bone Tomahawk
Ridley Scott Was Attached To Adapt S. Craig Zahler's Western Novel For The Big Screen
Before he became a filmmaker, Zahler was an author who had written such books as the crime novel Mean Business on North Ganson Street and the western novel Wraiths of the Broken Land. In fact, in an interview with The Daily Dead, Zahler revealed that Bone Tomahawk began its life as an adaptation of Wraiths of the Broken Land for himself to direct.
Since he couldn’t adapt Wraiths of the Broken Land on a low budget, he wrote the original script for Bone Tomahawk as a companion piece that could be produced for less money. In 2016, shortly after the release of Bone Tomahawk, Deadline reported that Ridley Scott was attached to direct a movie adaptation of Wraiths of the Broken Land, with The Martian’s Drew Goddard set to write the script.
Wraiths of the Broken Land is a brutal Western epic that sees a group of men embarking on a dangerous mission to save their captive sisters.
Wraiths of the Broken Land is a brutal Western epic that sees a group of men embarking on a dangerous mission to save their captive sisters. Given the story, this would likely be a similarly violent, uncompromising Western that would be perfect for Bone Tomahawk fans, but it’s yet to materialize.
What Happened With Ridley Scott's Wraiths Of The Broken Land Movie?
Scott Moved On To Other Projects
According to the Deadline report, Ridley Scott was planning to make Wraiths of the Broken Land his next project after 2017’s Alien: Covenant. However, by that time, Scott had moved on to other projects. He ended up releasing All the Money in the World in the same year as Alien: Covenant, then focused his attention on The Last Duel and House of Gucci, then Napoleon, and then Gladiator II. Next, Scott is tackling a Bee Gees biopic. With each successive Scott project, it seems less and less likely that Wraiths of the Broken Land will ever get made.
Bone Tomahawk (2015) Key Facts Breakdown |
|
Budget |
$1,8 million |
Box Office |
$382,579 |
Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score |
91% |
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score |
74% |
Source: The Daily Dead, Deadline

Bone Tomahawk
- Release Date
- October 23, 2015
- Runtime
- 132 minutes
- Director
- S. Craig Zahler
Bone Tomahawk is a Western film that follows Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who gathers together a group of fighters to save three kidnapped victims from a clan of cannibals. After the town's doctor is kidnapped along with two others, forcing the sheriff to partner with the town's Native American professor and find the tribe before it's too late.
- Writers
- S. Craig Zahler
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