Current status (chugging along): looking towards Spring 2027 to start shooting

Death In Convict Canyon tells the amazing true story of the first train robbery in the west which was followed up with the largest prison break ever at that time. It taps into the genre’s resurgence while addressing contemporary themes of justice and the gray area of right and wrong. Its lean budget ensures high production value, leveraging stunning natural locations (many at or near where the events actually occurred) and a tightly woven narrative. 

Synopsis:

Historical Western Adventure / Feature

Based on a shocking true story of a failed frontier preacher who leads an outcast gang into robbery, rebellion and murder, while a determined sheriff fights to prove that justice belongs in a courtroom - not at the end of a rope.

In 1870s California the railroad thundered across frontier, hauling innovation, opportunity and fortunes over remote mountain passes. For honest men, it promised a new age of prosperity. For desperate men, it offered a new kind of prey.

John Chapman’s one of the men progress left behind. A failed preacher, he gathers a congregation of outcasts - stagecoach robbers, gamblers, hard-luck miners, and ex-cons- and leads them into legend. Together, they pull off what newspapers across the country hail as the Great Train Robbery: more than $40,000 stolen, with not a single passenger harmed.

Their triumph is brief.

Sheriff Robert Kinkead gathers evidence and traces clues from railroad tracks to telegraph offices to low-rent boarding houses. Within days, Chapman and his gang are captured, tried, and sentenced to hard labor. But prison does not break Chapman. It hardens him. Twisting scripture into permission, he convinces himself that escape is not only possible, but ordained. He masterminds a massive prison break that leaves guards dead and convicts scattering into the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains.

Chapman and his closest allies have a chance at freedom, until the brutal, senseless murder of a young mail carrier changes everything. Fear becomes fury. Posses become mobs. Justice curdles into revenge. Once again, Kinkead takes up the chase, determined to bring Chapman back alive and prove that the law must mean more than a noose.

Chapman and his surviving gang are finally cornered, but public outrage overwhelms the power of Kinkead’s badge. Judged beneath the open California sky — their punishment is carried out at the end of a rope, in a place that will be forever known as Convict Canyon.

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Based on Jim Reed’s book and the terrible true events that inspired it, Death in Convict Canyon is more than a gripping Western adventure - it’s a story about what happens when technology changes a society faster than its laws, institutions, and moral codes can keep up. At its heart, the film explores a topic relevant today: just as then, progress comes with a price.

Screenplay:

• Written by Chris Lieber and Michael David MacBride

• Adapted from the historical novel by Jim S. Reed

Vision Statement:

Inspired by the raw intensity of Sergio Leone’s epics, the moral complexity of Don Siegel’s character studies, and the visual style of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Revenant, we’ll use expansive cinematography (shot with anamorphic lenses) and a cast of weathered souls to immerse audiences in a world where past sins grind them into dust. The period-precise production design and diverse ensemble will immerse audiences in a world where every choice has dire consequences. These characters will battle the elements of a winter wilderness hellscape attempting to elude a tenacious group of vigilantes, bounty hunters and lawmen. It will exude stylistic choices of The Revenant, Treasure of Sierra Madre, High Sierra and the Hateful Eight. Utilizing Jim Reed’s well-sourced book, the writers recreated the authenticity and feel of those earlier days in the mining towns of Nevada. They utilize the timeless themes of law, order and justice in its different forms; timeless stories of Justice and Vigilantism and the gray area in-between. This never-been-told story represents a different time in the unique history of Nevada and Central California.