Jensen Ackles Is Becoming A Cowboy
Jensen Ackles is going to joining Alec Baldwin's next movie!
This article is more than 2 years old
There were 15 seasons of Supernatural in which Jensen Ackles starred as one of the heroes, Dean Winchester. So, you would think Ackles would be at least a little concerned about having trouble getting roles that have nothing to do with blasting ghosts with salt-filled shotgun shells. So far, it doesn’t seem like the actor is going to have much trouble. Among other things, we’ve just learned Ackles will be appearing opposite Alec Baldwin in an upcoming western.
The report comes from Deadline, who names Jensen Ackles as the latest actor to be cast in Rust. The Supernatural star will play a legendary U.S. Marshal named Wood Helm. Alec Baldwin will play the eponymous outlaw Harland Rust who saves his 13-year-old grandson Lucas from the hangman’s noose. Afterward, Harland and Rust go on the run from Ackles’ Wood Helm as well as the bounty hunter Fenton “Preacher” Lang.
Rust was first announced last May, when neither Jensen Ackles nor any cast members but Alec Baldwin were confirmed. Along with playing the film’s lead, Baldwin will act as executive producer for the film, which he co-wrote with the director Joel Souza. Souza’s last film was the 2019 action flick Crown Vic, which he likewise wrote and directed.
Last month, before news of Jensen Ackles’ involvement came, Deadline reported that filming for Rust would begin this month. The site also gave us more casting announcements, including that Travis Fimmel (Vikings) would join the cast as the bounty hunter Fenton “Preacher” Lang and the young Brady Noon (Boardwalk Empire) will play Rust’s death-sentenced grandson Lucas. Frances Fisher was also announced as Lucas’ great aunt. Fans of the western genre would no doubt recognize Fisher from the 1992 Oscar magnet Unforgiven in which she played Strawberry Alice — the matriarch of the justice-hungry sex workers of Big Whiskey, Wyoming.
There’s no word on a release date for Rust just yet, but it seems likely before we see Jensen Ackles hunting Alec Baldwin and Brady Noon, we’ll be seeing him in the upcoming third season of Amazon Prime’s The Boys. Last August fans learned Ackles would be joining the cast of the graphic superhero series as Soldier Boy — a satirical take on Marvel’s Captain America. A year after the announcement, we got our first look at Ackles in Soldier Boy’s costume.
In spite of having already worked with Jensen Ackles as a writer on Supernatural, Eric Kripke — The Boys‘s showrunner — said at first the former Dean Winchester actor wasn’t on his radar for Soldier Boy because he was looking to find an older performer for the role. The casting happened as a kind of happy accident, as Kripke was on the phone with Ackles and complaining about how difficult it had been to cast the patriotic superhero when it finally occurred to him the guy he was talking to might be the perfect choice.
Jensen Ackles is also set to appear in the upcoming Supernatural prequel series The Winchesters. When the series was announced in June, Jared Paladecki — who played Ackles’ brother Sam in Supernatural — tweeted that he was “gutted” by the news as it was the first time he was hearing about it.
