News > A Follow Up to the Original Wicker Man?

Written by David Morgan

In 1973, Robin Hardy directed the undisputed classic thriller The Wicker Man. Since then he's more or less dropped off the map, beating even Terrence Malick in the "reclusive director" contest. But now, thirty-five years later, he's working on a film called Cowboys for Christ, starring Wicker Man actor Christopher Lee. The Sunday Herald revealed (though most of the article talks about Britt Eklund's pseudo-nude scene in the earlier film) that Joan Collins will play Lady Delia Morrison, and said of the plot:

The film is about a gospel singer and her cowboy friend, both virgins, who set off from Texas to enlighten Scottish heathens about the ways of Christ. They are welcomed on the estate of a genial laird, again played by Lee, whose intentions turn out to be less than honourable.

A Celtic folk score has been composed by Keith Easdale along similar lines to the original soundtrack of The Wicker Man. Shooting is scheduled to begin on April 10 in some of the same Dumfries locations where the classic horror film was made.

Hardy wrote the novel of Cowboys for Christ last year. He describes it in relation to his first film: 

They thought they'd broken the mould after we made the original Wicker Man, but they were wrong. [Here is] another film with beautiful songs, sassy sex, a few good laughs and horror upon horrors ahead.

Hardy is also hoping for a third film to follow in the same vein, though it would essentially be a comedy.