Welsh, Vaughn, Bean: The Magificent Eleven

The seven men have become eleven amateur footballers, the Mexican village has transformed into a tandoori restaurant under siege, and the ‘banditos’ are led by a lunatic called Blond Bob. It’s The Magnificent Seven all right, but not as we know it. This comic reimagining is to be directed by Irvine Welsh and we have casting news after the jump.

Three names have just been confirmed as joining the cast. They are usual Britflick suspects Sean Bean and Dougray Scott and – and this is where things get interesting – Robert Vaughn, who played outlaw Lee, one of the seven from the original 1960 film. There is no word yet on who’ll play whom but expect Bean to be out in front. The story is set to follow an amateur/Sunday league football team who take on the job of protecting their local curry house from thugs.

This will be Welsh’s first shot at solo feature directing, though he’s obviously spent time learning the business before leaping in. He co-directed last year’s Good Arrows, a comedy about a darts player who suffers a heart attack and loses his nerve, with Helen Grace; he also co-directed (with Mark Cousins) a chapter of the documentary The New Ten Commandments, ‘The Right to Liberty’ .

The Magnificent Eleven was scripted by John and Peter Adams, who are quite new to the screenwriting game (their only previous credit is for the one-room thriller S.N.U.B! about a group of survivors in a government bunker post nuclear attack) but word has it that Welsh gave the draft a polish.

It’s a neat concept – The Magnificent Seven was of course a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, relocated from rural Japan to the Wild (though never The Wild, Wild) West – so another relocation would certainly be in the spirit of the tradition. It’ll also be fun to watch as the cast fills out.

The one concern is that this is sounding more than a little like a comfy Tarantino/Ritchie lads’ fest (if you have a comic movie about a gang of guys getting into a tight situation, can you really call your chief baddie Blond Bob without telegraphing parallels to one knife-wielding nut Mr Blonde?) and Welsh will have to work extremely hard to avoid creating scenes, characters and situations that echo Reservoir Dogs, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Rocknrolla and even his own Trainspotting.