How First-Time Feature Filmmaker Jeymes Samuel Is Reinventing the Western With ‘The Harder They Fall’
Jeymes Samuel was finally on location in Santa Fe, N.M., gearing up to shoot his feature directorial debut, the high-octane Western “The Harder They Fall.” His dream project was about to become a reality.To help him realize his vision, he’d assembled an all-star cast headlined by Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors and Regina King, fresh off her supporting actress Oscar win for “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Netflix had put up $90 million to fund Samuel’s radical reimagining of what he calls the New West, an epic canvas populated by bandits and lawmen, saloonkeepers and stagecoach robbers, gunslingers and sharpshooters, all of whom are Black.