Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has decided that the follow-up to his first feature-length film comedy Ted will be a western. Granted, since this is MacFarlane we’re talking about it, it will be a western more in the style of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles than it will be in the traditional sense of westerns by the likes of John Ford, etc.
Although it’s title sounds like it could have been a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, the Hollywood Reporter is describing A Million Ways To Die In The West as “a Western with contemporary humor, with one undercurrent being just how dangerous and painful life really was in the late 1800s.” Since MacFarlane has written the project with his Ted co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, I suppose that the new film will be on the same level of humor. That’s good news for those who helped the film the film take in over $218 million at the box office.
The Reporter goes on the state that the deal to make the film is not finalized, but the film should be bankrolled by Media Rights Capital, the same folks who opened up their checkbook so MacFarlane could make Ted when no one else seemed interested in making a film about a walking, talking stoner teddy bear and his best friend. Whereas MacFarlane stayed strictly behind the cameras for Ted, although he did supply the voice for the titular character, he is looking to both star and direct in this new film. Shooting is hoped to begin next summer.
