Barry Keoghan, Fresh From Oscar Nomination, Lines Up Dream ‘Billy The Kid’ Project With Director Bart Layton And Producer Ed Guiney
deadline.comFresh from his Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin, Irish actor Barry Keoghan is turning his attention back towards a dream assignment: a new feature retelling of the story of Billy the Kid.
Keoghan’s American Animals director Bart Layton is aboard to direct the feature, produced by Element Pictures with Film4. “We’ve seen many versions of Billy the Kid on screen before,” Keoghan tells Deadline. “My interest was in trying to tell a version that breaks from the facade of that cool, calm, and collected gunslinger Billy the Kid that we’re all used to seeing.
I wanted to humanize him in a way.” “This isn’t just a passion project for Barry,” notes Element Pictures producer Ed Guiney, who came aboard having worked with Keoghan on The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Calm with Horses. “This approach is something new, and it’s a version of the tale we hope the world will want to see.” The project will lean into the Kid’s Irish ancestry and complicated childhood.
Born in New York as Henry McCarty, he was orphaned at the age of 15 when his mother died and his stepfather abandoned him. His first arrest for robbery came a year later, and by the time he was 18, he was wanted for murder after an altercation in Arizona.
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