Did John Wayne Really Make a Third Rooster Cogburn Movie?

But one in particular stood out: Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed U.S. Marshal from True Grit who helped turn late-career Wayne into an Oscar winner. He liked the role so much, he did it twice. But did he do it a third time?

Well, not exactly. But someone else tried to do it for him.

Here's what actually happened: in 1978, four years after Rooster Cogburn (the sequel), a made-for-TV movie called True Grit: A Further Adventure aired. It was meant to launch a full-blown TV series. It didn't.

John Wayne was not involved. Neither was Katharine Hepburn. The studio instead hired Warren Oates — best known for The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia — to take over as Rooster Cogburn. Lisa Pelikan played Mattie Ross. The movie was directed by Richard T. Heffron, who had a solid TV resume but wasn't exactly John Ford.

The idea was simple: ride the name recognition of True Grit into regular network content. But audiences weren't buying it, and the project quietly died after the pilot movie aired. No series, no follow-up, no third John Wayne turn.

Here's a quick breakdown of the Rooster Cogburn on-screen lineage:

• 1969 – True Grit
  John Wayne's original outing as Rooster Cogburn, directed by Henry Hathaway. Earned Wayne his only Oscar.
• 1975 – Rooster Cogburn
  A sequel pairing Wayne with Katharine Hepburn. Reviews were mixed, production was chaotic, and Wayne later admitted it didn't work.
• 1978 – True Grit: A Further Adventure (TV movie)
  Warren Oates takes over. A failed backdoor pilot with no real staying power.
• 2010 – True Grit (Remake)
  Directed by the Coen Brothers. Jeff Bridges takes the role in a darker, more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis's novel. The film earned ten Academy Award nominations.

So no — John Wayne never made a third Rooster Cogburn film. But the studio sure tried to keep the franchise alive without him, and the results were exactly what you'd expect from a network TV Western trying to piggyback off a legend: disposable.

Still, for a character introduced in a 1968 novel, Rooster Cogburn's shelf life hasn't been bad. Just don't expect a Further Adventure to show up on anyone's Western rewatch list.