Posted in: Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: brian skiba, Gunslingers, heather graham, lionsgate, nicolas cage, stephen dorff

Gunslingers Director on 'Django' & Eastwood Inspirations of Western

Writer-Director Brian Skiba (Clear Cut) spoke to Bleeding Cool about the Westerns that influenced Gunslingers, Cooper Barnes & more.

Writer and director Brian Skiba has made a lot of friends in Hollywood throughout the years, and it helped him land his ensemble cast in his latest Western Gunslingers for Lionsgate. The film follows a wanted man (Stephen Dorff) who surfaces in a small Kentucky town with a bounty on his head as forces start losing in. As brothers face off against one another and bullets tear the town to shreds, this lightning-fast gunslinger makes his enemies pay the ultimate price for their greed. Skiba spoke to Bleeding Cool about getting inspiration from a Lionsgate executive, casting, how the film became Cooper Barnes's first post-Captain Man role once his commitments with Nickelodeon wrapped, and character backstories.

Gunslingers Writer-Director Brian Skiba on Living His Dream Through His Love of Westerns

Bleeding Cool: What was the inspiration behind 'Gunslingers?'

It was a love of Westerns, growing up watching them. I loved Westerns, and I had been talking to one of the CEOs, Barry Brooker at Lionsgate, about his love of Westerns. He referred me to watch a few old Django-type westerns, and I started watching some of those, and I was like, "Yeah, man." I love the storytelling, and it's very 'Unforgiven'-esque where it's bad guys who are good and doing good acts. I took that and put my own spin on it.

Were there other ones that you gravitated towards growing up before you were told to look at 'Django?'

It's 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' (1966) and 'Unforgiven' (1992). I think [Clint] Eastwood is a master of taking his characters from his Westerns in the '70s and '80s, taking the bad guy and making him good, you know, "Paint the town black." He's a bad guy who comes in and saves the town. That's probably one of the biggest influences is that one.

How did casting come together? You got Stephen [Dorff], Heather [Graham], Nicolas [Cage], Jeremy [Kent Jackson], Tzi [Ma], and Cooper. Can you tell me how you got such a talented ensemble?

A lot of them are people I've worked with throughout the years. Stephen Dorff and I've done three to four movies. Jeremy and I have done quite a few movies. Laurie Love is my producing partner, and we've done a lot of movies together. Cooper and I did a Christmas movie years ago ('Defending Santa' in 2013), and then he got cast as Captain Man. Nickelodeon told him he's not allowed to work on anything else.

I kept calling him, saying, "Coop, let's do something." He's like, "I can't," and then, he finally quit. I heard on the news that he's like, "Captain Man was done" and they filmed the last episode [in 2024]. I called him, "'Can you work now?" Cooper's like, "Yeah, man. What do you got?" It was perfect timing, so I nabbed him straight out of the Nickelodeon camp. He's a phenomenal actor, and Cage and Heather came through. I also partnered with Randall Batinkoff, a phenomenal actor, on quite a few things, not to mention he's been a huge support and producer on the film. He helped bring [Heather and Nic] to the table, so it's relationships, invaluable support, and a lot of love.

Your characters are such an eclectic mix. Were any of the characters based on real people? One that stood out for me was Cage's preacher character, Ben, and his raspy voice.

No, I didn't base anybody on real figures. It wasn't like anybody's playing Jesse James or Wyatt Earp. Westerns in that period have a lot of thematic elements that transcend the genre. You've got bad guys being good and good guys being bad. Cage's character is one of those guys where it was like, you know, the backstory behind Ben is he was hung, God saved him from the hanging, and the tree broke. We've written out these backstories, the tree broken, and that's why he's got the raspy voice now. My hope is that the film does gangbusters, everybody watches it, and I will go out and expand, making some more films about these characters and telling their backstories.

Gunslingers, which also stars Jeremy Kent Jackson, Costas Mandylor, William McNamara, Mohamed Karim, Scarlet Stallone, Bre Blair, Forrest Wilder, Forrie J. Smith, Laurie Love, Eric Mabius, Mitchell Hoog,, and Ava Monroe Tadross is in theaters, on-demand and digital.

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