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Some film roles carry weight regardless of screen time. When Angel Studios brings its version of Angel and the Badman to theaters on October 9, Zachary Levi will be stepping into a character John Wayne cared enough about to finance himself, in a film the Wayne family has already circled back to once before.
The 1947 original was the first picture Wayne both produced and starred in, a departure at a moment when he was still consolidating his standing in the genre. He played Quirt Evans, a gunfighter who collapses near a Quaker family's land and is nursed back to health by their daughter, Penelope, played by Gail Russell. Harry Carey appeared as a marshal content to wait and see which way Evans would turn. Critics at the time noted the film's unusual softness for a Wayne vehicle, built more on persuasion than on gunfire.
That premise is intact in the new version. Julio Quintana directs, with Levi as Evans, Tommy Lee Jones and Neal McDonough alongside him. The studio's synopsis describes an outlaw who arrives expecting to die and is offered something else instead, before a marshal and an outlaw gang force the question of what he has actually become.
McDonough, working with Angel Studios for the third time, called the production a career highlight and singled out Quintana's direction. The film arrived as part of a five-picture expansion to the studio's 2026 slate.
What most viewers will not know is that this is the second remake, not the first. In 2009, the Hallmark Channel aired a television version directed by Terry Ingram, with Lou DiamondPhillips as Evans and Luke Perry as the rival gunman Laredo Stevens. Wayne's grandson Brendan Wayne appeared in a supporting role as Evans' sidekick. Reviews were middling, and the film has largely receded from view.
Brendan Wayne has since spoken about what he took from his grandfather's work. Discussing his role as the physical performer behind the helmet in The Mandalorian, he described learning stillness, and recalled John Ford's habit of telling Wayne that the less the director gave him, the better the picture would be. (We at Parade have covered Wayne's Mandalorian suit struggles in the past).
Related: The Man Inside the 'Star Wars' Mandalorian Armor: 'I Died and Came Back to Life'
That is the specific challenge facing Levi, an actor known for range and volume in Shazam! and Chuck. The 1947 film asked audiences to watch a man reconsider himself with very little dialogue devoted to the process.
Wayne made 179 films across five decades, and Angel and the Badman rarely appears near the top of the lists. It remains the one he put his own name on the ownership line for, which says a lot.
