The Highwaymen Bonnie and Clyde Movie Announces Cast
“You’ve read the story of Jesse James,” wrote Bonnie Parker during the famous crime spree she undertook with Clyde Barrow, “Of how he lived and died.” Well, an event series is coming out on Netflix called The Highwaymen, about the Texas Rangers who got Bonnie and Clyde.
The Highwaymen will star Kevin Costner as Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, and Woody Harrelson as his partner Maney Gault, who came out of retirement to nab the Barrow Gang, according to Deadline. Costner’s (Dances With Wolves, Hidden Figures, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, JFK and The Untouchables) turn as a Texas Ranger in the History miniseries Hatfields and McCoys earned him an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a SAG Award. Kathy Bates, Kim Dickens, from Fear the Walking Dead, Thomas Mann, John Carroll Lynch, and William Sadler will also star, according to Variety.
The Highwaymen will be directed by John Lee Hancock (The Founder), who co-wrote the screenplay with John Fusco and Scott Frank. Bates worked with Hancock on The Blind Side. She will next star in The Laureate, about British poet and novelist Robert Graves.
The movie is based on true events. Hamer and Gault chased Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow across several states before finally ambushing them in Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934. Barrow was wanted for murder, robbery, and kidnapping, which Parker denied in her poem “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.” Bonnie wasn’t the touch gal, smoking cigars while holding a machine gun, that the papers at the time made her out to be.
The Barrow Gang also included Clyde’s brother Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, his wife, Blanche, and William Daniel, who was a ringer for “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Buck was killed during a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933. Blanche was arrested. Jones was captured in November 1933 in Houston.
The 1967 classic gangster film Bonnie and Clyde was directed by Arthur Penn, and starred Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons. The film changed cinema with the graphic violence of the ambush scene. Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger played Bonnie and Clyde in the 2013 A&E miniseries.
The Highwaymen will be shot in Louisiana. It will be executive produced by Michael Malone, Costner, Rod Lake and Harrelson. Casey Silver will produce the series. Netflix plans a late 2018 release.