One of the most uncomfortably horrifying and unraveling films to have been produced in recent years is Taylor Sheridan’s winter wasteland mystery thriller, Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. The 2017 movie touches on many themes and claws at even more unsettling realizations as the audience, frozen in terror and pity, witnesses the drama unfolding before them. The cruel senselessness and the animalistic baseness of human nature lie at the heart of it all. Sheridan, in his endless cauldron of storytelling and imagination, cooks a perfect plot amid melancholy mountains and punishing landscapes.
Wind River Gears Up For a Long-Awaited Sequel
After the grueling horror of the 2017 Neo-Western crime thriller, Hollywood’s penchant to prey on the emotionally variable range of its audience finds a likely target with a well-timed sequel to Wind River. Titled, Wind River: The Next Chapter, the movie is a who’s who of industry greats, including returning actors Gil Birmingham and Martin Sensmeier along with six new (and high-profile) cast additions: the multiple-award-winning up-and-comer Kali Reis, Succession’s Alan Ruck, Tatiana Means, who is coming off of his latest great with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Jason Clarke, Scott Eastwood, and Chaske Spencer.
The Next Chapter cracks open the scabbed-over wounds from the previous film’s events, picking up the story with Chip Hanson now at the center of the narrative. The plot however has thickened and as unsolved ritualistic murders on the reservation rise the charts, Hanson (enlisted by the FBI), now a newly-minted U.S. Fish & Game officer, “becomes embroiled in a desperate and dangerous fight between the authorities, a vigilante and the reservation he calls home,” according to Deadline.
Jeremy Renner Takes a Step Back From Wind River Sequel
The Taylor Sheridan-written and directed mystery crime thriller was a golden needle of pure and molten emotions driven by catharsis in a haystack of generic crime thrillers. But what made it so was the extraordinary yet subtle performance delivered by Jeremy Renner as the troubled and haunted Cory Lambert opposite an equally astounding Elizabeth Olsen’s Jane Banner. The duo hit a home run with the Sheridan masterpiece and although the crime has filtered back for Round 2, the actors may not do the same for the sequel.
Moreover, Renner’s recent fatalistic experience on New Year’s Day with his snowcat has made the actor take a backseat in the ongoing proceedings in Hollywood. The Marvel star has only recently come out of the hospital and is simultaneously celebrating the incredible Season 2 run of Sheridan’s Mayor of Kingstown. At the moment, going back into filming among the harsh winter landscapes that mark the territories of Wind River seems a bit rushed and on the nose.
The sequel, right now, is in good hands with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Kari Skogland set to direct. Production has already begun on The Next Chapter but no release date has been announced as of the time of this article’s publishing.
Wind River is available for streaming on Paramount+.
Source: Deadline
