Specifically, McConaughey is set to star as legendary tough guy detective Mike Hammer, for a film version of author Mickey Spillane’s work that Pizzolatto is writing. It marks what seems like it’ll be at least a bit of live-action resurgence for the actor, who hasn’t starred in a non-animated film project since 2019. (The Rivals Of Amziah King, his first live-action role since The Gentlemen, debuted to strong reviews at SXSW this year.)
It’s not hard, meanwhile, to see why Pizzolatto would gravitate toward the Hammer character, who represents a particularly brutal and violent breed of the classic private eye: As likely to solve a confrontation with a thrown punch as a clever rejoinder, and perfectly comfortable with killing the perpetrators he catches. It’s gritty material that feels planted directly in the wheelhouse of a writer and occasional director who’s had difficulty capitalizing on the momentum granted by True Detective‘s zeitgeist-gripping first season back in 2014; the show’s second and third seasons drew in far more mixed reviews, while Pizzolatto’s film scripts (for a revival of The Magnificent Seven, as well as crime thrillers Galveston and The Guilty) were met with similar shrugs. (He didn’t do his reputation any favors, meanwhile, by loudly complaining online about True Detective revival season Night Country when it debuted last year.)
Even so, Pizzolatto and McConaughey have spoken frequently about their desire to work together again (even, rumor has it, trying to rope Woody Harrelson back into the proceedings). The Hammer books (which got their start with I, The Jury in 1947) seem to be their way back to collaboration, with Skydance producing, and a search now running to find a director to handle the project. Truly, everything old is new again. History repeats itself! The stuff that happened before has a tendency to recur. God damn, we wish we had a good idiom about the cyclical nature of things happening that we could somehow end on here.
