Viggo Mortensen goes west in new film The Dead Don't Hurt

Mortensen will direct and star in the Western romance alongside Vicky Krieps

By Emma Keates  |  October 6, 2022 | 7:25pm
Aux News Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen goes west in new film The Dead Don't Hurt
Viggo Mortensen and Vicky Krieps Photo: Frazer Harrison

For his next role, the Crimes Of The Future star will be committing some crimes of the past. Okay, we’ll admit that was a cheap pun, but screaming “cowboy Viggo Mortensen” in all caps felt a little too extreme. However you feel about cowboy Viggo Mortensen, his cattleman hat will once again grace our screens in the new film The Dead Don’t Hurt.

Mortensen is set to star alongside Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread, Corsage). He wrote the original screenplay and will also be directing—his second time behind the camera after 2020's Falling.

The film, which producer Regina Solórzano calls “a love story free of archetypes,” is set in the 1860s and features some truly incredible Western names. Per Deadline, the summary is as follows:

Krieps stars as the fiercely independent French Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy who embarks on a relationship with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Mortensen). After meeting Olsen in San Francisco, Vivienne agrees to travel with him to his home near the quiet town of Elk Flats, where they start a life together. The Civil War separates them, leaving Vivienne to fend for herself in a place controlled by powerful rancher Alfred Jeffries and his violent, wayward son Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), aided and abetted by corrupt Mayor Rudolph Schiller. Olsen’s eventual return challenges their relationship as they have to confront and make peace with the person each has become.

“My aim is to do justice to the story of a uniquely resilient woman living in a lawless and isolated part of the U.S. Southwest in the 1860s,” Mortensen said of the story.

Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon), Danny Huston (Worlds Apart), Garret Dillahunt (Where The Crawdads Sing), Tom Bateman (Death on the Nile), Lance Henriksen (Falling), and W. Earl Brown (Five Days At Memorial) have also been cast. The Dead Don’t Hurt will begin production on October 12.

 
Join the discussion...