Clint Eastwood Almost Led the Unfilmable Gothic Horror From the Genre’s Greatest

Here is a great Hollywood what-if: Tim Burton once tried to make a gothic western called 'The Hawkline Monster' and wanted Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson to star in it. That pairing alone would have blown up every trade headline. Then it quietly died. Let me walk you through the whole saga, because the backstory is wild and, honestly, kind of explains itself.

The plan: Burton, Eastwood, Nicholson, one very strange novel

At some point after the book built a cult following, Burton set his sights on adapting Richard Brautigan's 1974 novel 'The Hawkline Monster.' He was aiming high on casting, too: Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson, together, for the first time. A gothic fantasy with a western backbone is basically a Burton playground, so the early excitement made sense.

Why it fell apart

The short version: the book is a beast to adapt. The long version: Burton got into development and ran into the same problems that stopped an earlier attempt by Hal Ashby, who had spent years trying to crack it. When a filmmaker as revered as Ashby can’t get a script to a place that works, you pay attention. Burton did, and he bailed mid-process rather than force something that wasn’t clicking.

"unfilmable"

That label has followed the novel for decades, and you can see why. The tone whiplashes between deadpan absurdism and eerie gothic; the structure wanders; the humor is surreal; logic dissolves whenever it feels like it. It’s not just weird. It’s a specific, literary kind of weird that resists tidy cinematic shape.

• 1970s: Hal Ashby spends years developing 'The Hawkline Monster' and never gets it to the starting line.
• Later: Tim Burton jumps in, sparks big casting talk with Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson, and ultimately stops mid-development when the book’s problems win.
• 2019: Yorgos Lanthimos (then coming off his own left-field hits) gets attached. That version stalls, too. Development hell continues.

So what is this story, exactly?

Brautigan’s novel is set in Oregon in 1902. Two not-at-all-heroic gunmen, Cameron and Greer, get hired by a young woman named Magic Child. She takes them to her family’s home, which is inexplicably buried in snow despite it being summer. Magic Child’s twin sister, Miss Hawkline, needs the pair to kill a creature living in the ice caves under the house. From there, it leans into Beowulf-style monster-hunting, but filtered through western tropes and Brautigan’s particular brand of gothic oddness and surreal comedy.

The book escalates with straight-faced insanity: a butler dies and then shrinks to doll size; the twins’ father shows up as a talking umbrella stand; and a mind-altering chemical sends everyone sideways. Think the dream logic of 'Alice in Wonderland' (which Burton has played with before), but thornier and less linear. People turn into objects and back again. Cause-and-effect is a suggestion. It’s delightful on the page and a nightmare to storyboard.

Basic stats for the curious: written by Richard Brautigan, published in 1974, generally filed under Gothic Western, and currently sitting around a 3.8/5 on Goodreads.

Why even Burton tapped out

Burton is excellent with dreamlike imagery and off-kilter tone. What this novel demands is something trickier: a truly non-linear, shape-shifting narrative where character logic mutates mid-scene and jokes land because the medium is prose. Put that 'father-as-elephant-footed-umbrella-stand' bit on screen and it either tips into goofy or requires such aggressive stylization that you lose the story. Even a filmmaker who thrives on the bizarre can read the tea leaves and decide it won’t translate cleanly into a satisfying movie.

The Clint Eastwood angle that still stings

Part of what makes this one hurt is how perfect Eastwood might have been in this sweet spot of genres. Before he was Clint Eastwood, capital C, he did tiny, uncredited turns in 1950s creature features like 'Revenge of the Creature' and 'Tarantula!'. Later, he steered into darker territory: the stalker classic 'Play Misty for Me,' the grimy, almost slasher-adjacent 'Tightrope,' and westerns that flirt with the supernatural, like 'High Plains Drifter' and 'Pale Rider.'

'The Hawkline Monster' could have been a full-circle moment: a return to his horror roots, not as a novelty, but as a true star in a genre mash-up that fits his screen persona. Add Nicholson to the mix, and you have a mythology-building event before day one of production. We never got it, and that is a genuine loss to the alternate history of movies.

Where it stands

After Burton stepped away, the project went back on the shelf. Lanthimos circled it in 2019, and that, too, fizzled. Some novels do eventually find their movie. This one keeps fighting anyone who tries. If you’ve read it, you probably get why.

Would Eastwood and Nicholson have cracked it? Or is this one best left as a great book and an even better near-miss? I’m curious where you land.