Working The Trapline — Wilderness Crime, Public Lands Win, When Billy Met Pancho

Netflix will serve up a limited crime drama series set in glorious Yosemite later this summer.

Eric Bana is venturing into the wilderness of an American national park in the upcoming limited series Untamed. As Kyle Turner, an Investigative Services Branch agent of the National Parks Service, Bana is on the hunt for a killer, one who knows Yosemite National Park as well as he does; however, the dark secrets lurking in both Kyle and the park’s past may be just as dangerous as the murderer.

Created by Mark L. Smith (American Primeval, The Revenant) and Elle Smith (The Marsh King’s Daughter), the character-driven mystery thriller follows a murder on the grounds of Yosemite. “Everyone thinks of Yosemite as this beautiful place with all the vistas and all the scenery, but we were trying to touch on the dangers that are just beyond that,” co-showrunner Mark L. Smith tells Tudum. “I love stripping all the cheats away, stripping all the more modern tools that people can use. It really gets down to the character and what they can find within themselves.”

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Massive outcry from hunters and anglers quashed the potential sale of half-a-million acres of public lands. Jason Sillars of MeatEater reports:

The move comes on the heels of overwhelming opposition to the provision from hunters, anglers, and other public land advocates.

“This was my San Juan Hill; I do not support the widespread sale or transfer of public lands. Once the land is sold, we will never get it back. God isn’t creating more land,” said Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who spearheaded the effort in Congress to remove public land sales from the budget bill. “Public access, sportsmanship, grazing, tourism… our entire Montanan way of life is connected to our public lands. I don’t yield to pressure; I only yield to higher principle. There is a process to making sure that our lands are being used for the best benefit of the people.”

MeatEater went after this hard, and hats off to ’em.

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On a podcast, Emilio Estevez revealed the setup for Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive. I will be calling it When Billy Met Pancho.

Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive. So it begs the question, is he dead, is he alive? It also tucks into Jon [Bon Jovi’s] song “Wanted Dead or Alive.” So there’s that little Easter egg. But, it does center on a bunch of new regulators. Mostly Latino. Indigenous people. Most of the film takes place in Mexico. And it falls on the eve of the Mexican Revolution. So you have a young Pancho Villa, who was 28 at the time.

You have his group of soldados, true believers and revolutionaries, who are all kids. You had a human trafficking ring going on on the border. He was taking kids from the pueblos and consigning them to his army. They were grabbing kids off the orphan train, and there was a whole cabal of people. The Germans were there. There was so much history that was going on on the border. And then, of course, during the Mexican Revolution, the Germans were funding Pancho Villa, because the Americans were just, were not interested, they looked down their noses.

So the Germans were providing gold and arms, and they were also spying on America. This was also a few years before World War I. And all this is happening south of the border. And Billy the Kid meets Pancho Villa, and he is asked to come along and train his young men. So that’s basically the story. I become the Tunstall character in many ways, and bring this group of mostly Latino young men through their paces, and then all hell breaks loose. The set-up is great. The set-up is a lot of fun… It’s a big Latino cast. A big Indigenous people cast, without feeling like… it feels natural.

Obviously, they’re running with the Billy-didn’t-die/Brushy Bill legend.

We’ll see. Could be fun.