Ditching the clergy collar and tailored spy suit, Dominic Cooper is putting on the sheriff star with his latest project, a spaghetti western series called That Dirty Black Bag. Produced by BRON Studios and Palomar, That Dirty Black Bag is currently in production and set to shoot in Italy, Spain, and Morocco. Mauro Aragoni serves as the showrunner for the series, alongside co-writers Silvia Ebruel, Marcello Izzo, and Fabio Paladini. This will be Aragoni’s English-language debut.
That Dirty Black Bag follows the eight-day battle between Arthur McCoy (Cooper) and Red Bill (Douglas Booth). McCoy is our white hat, a stalwart sheriff with a troubled past, while Red Bill is our infamous bounty hunter with a penchant for decapitating victims and stuffing them in a black bag. Joining Cooper and Booth are Niv Sultan, Guido Caprino, Christian Cooke, Paterson Joseph, Rose Williams (Sanditon), Zoe Boyle, Ivan Shaw, Eugene Brave Rock, Anna Chancellor, Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones), and Travis Fimmel (Vikings).
Cooper is certainly a dynamic and charismatic lead for this series, who is coming off his AMC+ spy thriller series Spy City, and he will also reprise his role as Howard Stark in Marvel’s What If...? Booth will make a formidable antagonist to Cooper’s McCoy. He’s been on the rise in the past few years with small roles in some high-profile films like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Loving Vincent, and The Dirt, and is also set to star in Terrence Malick’s next film, The Way of the Wind.
Highly stylized with beautiful cinematography, gory violence, and iconic music, spaghetti westerns are epic feats of filmmaking that focus more on tone. The creative team behind That Dirty Black Bag is looking to follow in the same direction as these 60s filmmakers while modernizing the feel for new and younger audiences.
Co-CEO Of Palomar, Nicola Serra, defined the goal of the series in a statement: “Our goal is to reimagine the tradition of the Spaghetti Western into something more operatic, modern and unexpected: great adventures, emotional complexity, strong female characters, little hints of dystopian elements.”
That Dirty Black Bag is currently being sold to international territories, but U.S. distribution rights and a release date have not yet been announced.