New and Upcoming Western Movies and TV Shows

There's a lot of optimism (wishful thinking?) in Just Westerns':

"...preview of 40 new upcoming Western films and TV shows heading are way in 2026 and beyond, including Young Guns 3, Lonesome Dove remake, Blood Meridian, A Fistful Of Dollars remake, Horizon: Chapter 2, The Dark Tower TV Show, Butch & Sundance, Flint, The Magnificent Seven TV Show, Wind River 2 and many more, as well as new Westerns starring Tim Blake Nelson, Kevin Costner, Scott Eastwood, Kiefer Sutherland, Wes Studi, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Pine."

For my personal tastes there are a few too many "neo-Westerns" here (although I love Yellowstone... and there's an abundance of Yellowstone-adjacent projects on this list) and, maybe, not enough classic, period Westerns.

"Get Off Your Horse and Paint Your Miniatures!"

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, wargame producer Great Escape Games has released three special collections of miniatures for its bestselling Western skirmish system Dead Man's Hand over the past few months.

The most recent, Put Up Yer Dukes, came out just the other day - offering five figures that encapsulate the iconic stature of John Wayne in the Western mythos.

To be honest, I'd have snatched this up just for The Shootist miniature, it being one of my all-time favourite Westerns, but I was buying up the sets as they were released anyway.

Prior to this we had The Quick and The Lead, which gave us miniatures for eight of the main characters in Sam Raimi's excellent Western The Quick and The Dead, as well as self-contained rules for running movie-style duels.

And the first of these bonus sets was A Fistful of Clints, five miniatures depicting classic characters portrayed by Clint Eastwood.

All the sets, of course, come with the requisite cards so you can use the miniature characters as "Legends of The West" (special characters) on your table.

While I may have picked up each one of these sets when they were released, so far I have only gotten my Clints painted by Matt:

My Fistful of Clints

I'm a long way from getting an actual game of Dead Man's Hand up and running, but I'm already entertaining ideas of battles just involving the characters from these three sets.

I really like what Great Escape Games has been doing with these sets and really hope they continue with this line: I'd pay good money for a Kevin Costner-inspired set, for instance.

Best Westerns of This Decade (So Far)

The Just Westerns YouTube channel shares a breakdown of its top Western films and TV shows released between 2020 and 2025.

There's plenty of great material here to add to your "must watch" list.

PROJECT 60: Back To The West

Good news for PROJECT 60 and the land of Dead Man's Hand. My latest couple of painted posses are galloping back to me from professional painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

As shown above, the two sets - produced by Great Escape Games - are The Family (a group of well-armed, militant religious zealots) and A Fistful of Clints (five different Western characters played by Clint Eastwood).

Next up will probably be The Quick and The Lead, a collection of eight gunfighters, based on the excellent Sam Raimi Western, The Quick and The Dead.

While these are sitting, patiently, in my gamesroom, I'm not yet sure if I'll send them to Matt before Christmas or not.

As to the Judge Dredd miniatures mentioned last time, I continue to snatch up sets I don't already own that I see on eBay for a reasonable price. However, given that Warlord has killed the line off, the prices are already starting to rocket upwards on the secondary market.

I'm looking at this as a more long-term project now, as I really ought to concentrate on one thing at a time. And that one thing is Great Escape Games' excellent Western skirmish game.

Dead Man's Hand remains my primary PROJECT 60 objective on the wargaming front, even though my plans to put together all the buildings I've purchased for the setting have been temporarily scuppered by my misbehaving spine.

I still have just over a year to 'complete' PROJECT 60, and - health-willing - I aim to devote more time to it in 2026. Particularly, the time I'd planned to spend on it THIS year!

PROJECT 60: Bringing The Word of Grud To The Wild West

Latest batch of miniatures to send off for painting

Although my body may disagree, I am still pushing ahead with the Dead Man's Hand side of my PROJECT 60 and have managed to pull together a small package of miniatures to send off to my brilliant painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

This time round, we're looking at the fanatical religious faction known as The Family and a collection of heroes, who can work with any faction able to afford them: A Fistful of Clints.

Released to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Great Escape Games, each miniature is a different Clint Eastwood character from his rich Western history:

"Five lone riders. A mercenary with a wary eye. A preacher who brings judgment. A rebel who won’t back down. A killer pulled from peace. A lawman with a rope around his past. Each miniature captures a different face of [a] frontier legend, grizzled, righteous, and deadly."

This is - currently - pretty much it for my Wild West miniatures, bar a few waifs and strays, but as I've already 'warned' Matt, I'm also returning to an earlier theme: Warlord Games' Judge Dredd miniatures skirmish system.

Having produced a lovely - but limited - range, Warlord pulled the plug on its 2000AD games line (which included Slaine, Strontium Dog and The ABC Warriors), much like they did with their Doctor Who line. I guess licensed miniatures aren't great money-spinners, which is a great pity for those of us who like them.

Clint Eastwood: The Antihero Who Rewrote the West

"Howdy, folks! Welcome if you're new here or returning, ready to take a ride through the wild world of Western films? Today, we’re talking about the man with no name who redefined the genre: Clint Eastwood. From a mysterious gunslinger to a legendary director, Eastwood didn’t just star in Westerns - he reshaped them. So, grab your hat, saddle up, and let’s explore how Clint Eastwood became the ultimate Western icon."

Historian Rates Nine American Civil War Battles In Movies

Garry Adelman, a historian, rates nine American Civil War battles in movies.

He comments on the Civil War-era artillery and rifles on display in Free State of Jones (2016), starring Matthew McConaughey; and Emancipation (2022), starring Will Smith. 

He explains the use of dynamite and other explosives seen in Cold Mountain (2003), starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger; Sahara (2005), starring Matthew McConaughey; and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967), starring Clint Eastwood.

He breaks down the military strategy seen in the battle scenes in Glory (1989), starring Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington; Gettysburg (1993), starring Jeff Daniels; and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, and Tommy Lee Jones. 

And finally, he separates fact from fiction regarding Civil War-era surgeries as seen in Dances with Wolves (1990), starring Kevin Costner.

Adelman is the chief historian at the American Battlefield Trust. He has also been a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park for 27 years.

Behind-The-Scenes of Open Range

Open Range is a beautifully made, underrated Western movie directed by and starring Kevin Costner as Charley Waite, alongside Robert Duvall as Boss Spearman.

So this documentary will break down 20 things you probably never knew about Open Range (2003), covering all the most interesting easter eggs, references and behind the scenes stories from the making of this modern western, including the reference to Unforgiven that you missed, how the movie interfered with Quentin Tarantino and why Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall were secretly in a whole lot of pain for most of their scenes.

Spaghetti Westerns Off The Beaten Track

Tired of the same Spaghetti Westerns on every list? In this video, we spotlight 10 hidden Spaghetti Western gems that go beyond Sergio Leone.

These underrated Western movies bring brutal shootouts, morally grey outlaws, and some of the best Italian Western storytelling ever filmed.

From the haunting revenge of Death Rides a Horse to the political grit of A Bullet for the General, these cult classic Westerns pack everything fans love: dusty towns, intense standoffs, and unforgettable anti-heroes.

Perfect for anyone exploring non-Leone Spaghetti Westerns or digging deeper into gritty Western cinema.

Sergio Leone's Landscape of Faces

After the success of the Dollars trilogy, Sergio Leone was told by the studio he had to direct one more Western. What he created, may be the greatest western, and one of the greatest films of all time. Deemed too long and slow for audiences, Leone perfectly utilized the nothingness of western life, causing scenes to move almost painfully slow, but in the most beautiful way.

Clint Eastwood's Favourite (And Least Favourite) Westerns

Eastwood doesn't talk about Westerns like a critic — he talks about them like a guy who's seen it all. He'll praise a flop the studio buried, trash his own movie so hard he nearly walked away from acting, and call The Ox-Bow Incident a masterpiece after his own producers called it worthless. These are the Westerns Eastwood calls the best ever made — and two he wishes he never touched.

PROJECT 60: Settlers Are Arriving and The Town Is Growing

My first collection of painted gunfighters for Dead Man's Hand

PROJECT 60 - and particularly my plans for the Wild West skirmish game, Dead Man's Hand - is really gaining momentum now.

Today, I received back my first batch of painted miniatures from my painter, Matt. You can get a taste of what they were like unpainted here and check out the pictures in this post to see what an amazing transformation Matt's skill with a brush has brought to them.

They are posed outside my latest building acquisition: a completed and painted MDF Western blacksmiths (with stable), a great purchase from eBay.

This will sit nicely with my nameless saloon, and the other buildings I have yet to build myself (those that came in the Dead Man's Hand Redux starter set and a couple of others I was unable to resist).

I'm pretty certain I already have enough buildings to create a small town, suitable for play.

I just need to boost up my number of miniature gunfighters - and innocent civilians - and (once again) tidy up the games room, so I can display all this material and do it justice.

Luckily, I am already assembling a second wave of miniatures to dispatch to Matt as soon as possible, but there are so many lovely 28mm Western miniatures out there that it's easy to keep getting distracted.

In the front we have Cullen Bohannon, Jonah Hex, Timmy The Flea, and The Man With No Name 

Beside The Man With No Name, we have Django (complete with coffin) and General Custer

Beyond this fantastic development, I've also been tinkering in the garden room, rebasing some old Western miniatures in my collection with the flatter Great Escape Games bases instead of the chunky Games Workshop ones that were my default setting more many decades.

A quartet of characters in the process of being rebased

I also need to summon up the courage to start assembling a couple of gangs from the multipart gunfighters that came in the Dead Man's Hand starter box.

I have ideas for themes: one based upon my own Hole-In-The-Head Gang, led by Timmy The Flea, and another based upon the main characters of The High Chaparral TV show.

I'm just slightly reticent because of my stroke-addled lack of manual dexterity and the minuteness of the parts for the figures.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLINT EASTWOOD!

The cinematic powerhouse that is Clint Eastwood turns 95 today, and in tribute Marc Reynard of the Just Westerns Youtube channel has put together this dirty dozen of Clint's coolest Western scenes.

"Dyin' Ain't Much Of A Living, Boy!"

Of all Clint Eastwood's Westerns, The Outlaw Josey Wales holds a special place in my heart because I associate it with my late father, who introduced the movie to me when I was a youngling.

I'll get round to reviewing it properly in due course, but I'm delighted to have recently picked up Forrest Carter's two Josey Wales novels, courtesy of eBay.

There were a bevvy of different printings (some with the two books in a single volume), but I knew what I was looking for: the two tales (Gone To Texas aka The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales) as separate paperbacks with the cinematic art (as shown above).

Ten Greatest Westerns of All Time, According To The American Film Institute

The American Film Institute named the 10 greatest Westerns ever made — and left out The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. What's on the list instead? A comedy about a drunk cowboy, a freezing shootout no one watches, a brothel run by Warren Beatty, and a John Wayne performance so disturbing even Scorsese couldn't stop watching it.

There's still a few of these films I still haven't seen - including, shockingly, The Searchers, but lists like this are useful for discovering - or being reminded of - titles that I must get round to seeing as soon as possible.

As a bonus, here's a Top 10 from Wrangler of the Famous People YouTube channel, based on online rankings: