Catherine Hardwicke will soon be heading Down Under.

The veteran filmmaker has been tapped to direct American River, a female-led Western for Bronte Studios. The project is set to start shooting in Australia during the second quarter of 2027. Casting is said to be underway already on the project with veteran casting directors Lisa Beach and Sarah Katzman leading the charge to find the ensemble cast. They have a long list of credits that spans multiple genres like comedies (Wedding Crashers, Horrible Bosses), dramas (Walk the Line), action pics (Logan), Westerns (3:10 to Yuma) and TV (Altered Carbon, The Detour).

Penned by Eric Esau, American River is being produced by Bronte Studios’ Blake Northfield and Michelle Krumm, and Shaun Goodman in association with MEW Films. Set at the dawn of the Gold Rush in California in 1848, American River follows four women from vastly different backgrounds as they are thrown together by circumstance and forced to navigate a world where fortunes are being made, laws are being rewritten and survival often belongs to those prepared to take matters into their own hands. It’s described as a dangerous journey through the “overwhelmingly male world” of the state’s goldfields where a fight to reclaim their homestead becomes a battle for survival.

“As a Texan, I love the scale and mythology of the Western, but what excited me about American River is the opportunity to come at that world from a completely different perspective,” Hardwicke explained in a statement. “These four women have very different reasons for being on this journey. They aren’t setting out to become heroes they are trying to survive and take control of their own futures. Against the extraordinary landscape and danger of the Gold Rush, that gives us the opportunity to make something emotional, physical and genuinely cinematic.”

Bronte Studios’ Northfield and Krumm explained what attracted them and their company to board the project: “What drew us to American River was the opportunity to make a Western that delivers everything audiences love about the genre extraordinary landscapes, horses, gold, danger and action while putting four women at the centre of that world. Catherine has an incredible ability to combine intimate character storytelling with scale and energy, and we couldn’t imagine a more exciting filmmaker to bring this story to life. Lisa and Sarah are now putting together the ensemble, and we’re excited to see who they discover to inhabit these extraordinary roles.”

More news on casting and production is expected in the coming weeks.

Hardwicke comes to the project after most recently directed Street Smart, which recently debuted at the Catalina Film Festival. She is best known for directing the first Twilight installment, as well as her other credits like Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown, Miss You Already, Miss Bala and more.

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Brett McGurk‘s new book Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages offers an insider account of the diplomatic rollercoaster to secure a ceasefire and hostage release in the war in Gaza.

The book, published this week, also offers a glimpse at White House messaging about the conflict, including two figures the president turned to in delivering a key speech: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.

McGurk, who served as deputy assistant for national security affairs to Biden, wrote of the scene as they prepared the president for his address on May 31, 2024. While Katzenberg and Spielberg’s role have been reported before, McGurk gave a first-hand account in the room, for a speech focused on a proposal to end the fighting and to secure a release of the hostages.

By that point, the Gaza conflict had created divisions within the Democratic coalition, protests at college campuses and presidential appearances and concerns over its impact on the November elections. There was pressure from the campaign for the president to make an address on the crisis, per McGurk.

McGurk wrote of the rehearsal, “In the Map Room, Biden peered at two screens behind me. ‘Jeffrey, Steven, welcome,’ he said. I turned around to see Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg on Zoom. They greeted Biden warmly, Spielberg saying this was the speech they wanted to hear.

“It was a reminder that while I saw this speech as a policy address with a functional aim, it had a political purpose, too,” McGurk wrote.

He added, “The speech was timed for Friday night in Israel, when much of the country shuts down, allowing time for us to shape its reception there and around the world. Notably, we did not inform Netanyahu that we were making the speech until shortly before Biden delivered it, as we knew the address would lock Netanyahu into the terms of the deal now on the table.

“Biden said he was ready.

“Katzenberg advised, ‘Remember, slow Joe, let the audience hear every word.’

“Biden smiled, ‘Slow Joe? Don’t let Jill hear that.’

“He read through the draft, pausing at times to ask questions about the text, which we addressed with rewrites.”

McGurk wrote that he found Biden “fully engaged, leaning forward on the podium.”

He wrote, “The moguls told him he looked strong, and he did. There was no sign of the Biden we’d all see on a debate stage with Trump only four weeks later.”

The latter was a reference to Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump. What followed were weeks of calls on Biden to drop out, coming from some elected Democrats and prominent donors, until he exited the race on July 19. Katzenberg had played a prominent role as a top adviser to Biden’s re-election campaign.

While the Biden speech focused on a peace proposal, as it turned out, it would take until the next year, a week before Trump returned to office, for a ceasefire agreement to be reached.