Young Guns II made the west wilder, but Emilio Estevez is ready to get even wilder and wilder and wilder, saying he envisions the future of Young Guns possibly expanding into three more movies–once disputes over the rights and intellectual property are cleared.
Speaking with UPROXX, Emilio Estevez said his spurs are all shined up should everything align. “It all comes down to the legal minds that work out IP. Listen, I’m ready to go. We have a terrific draft and if we can figure out the copyrights on all of this, and if Morgan Creek can sort of untangle from some of the issues that they’ve got in terms of continuing the franchise, we’re ready to go. So it’s just a question of when.” He added, “Of course, I’m not getting any younger, so I think we’ll drop the ‘young’ from the title, which we’ve done. But I think that Westerns being revived certainly plays to our benefit.” Estevez might have a point here. And while the genre doesn’t tend to fare all that well on the big screen, popularity and acclaim over shows like Yellowstone–backed by the older fanbase nostalgic over Young Guns–could push them to theatrical success.
As far as what any future Young Guns movies would center around, Emilio Estevez thinks Brushy Bill Roberts, the man who claimed to be Billy the Kid and lived his own stories life until the age of 71, is ripe for his own saga. “Brushy Bill Roberts, aka Billy the Kid, he fought alongside Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution. He was with Teddy Roosevelt at the Battle of San Juan Hill. Here’s a guy that was born with the advent of the Gatling gun and died in 1950 during the Atomic Age. I mean, think about what he saw over the course of his lifetime! And that really begs, I think, not only just one more film in the franchise, but I think you could do three, four, and five.” But Estevez isn’t so quick on the draw as far as reprising that role from Young Guns II. “We’ll hand it off to Martin [Sheen, Estevez’s father] to play him. I don’t have to wear all that makeup again.”
Lou Diamond Phillips, who played Jose Chavez y Chavez in both Young Guns movies, didn’t seem to have a lot of faith in the project, although said it’s not quite ready to be put in the ground. “It’s in limbo right now…It was chugging along there for a minute, but then I think they got into a rights situation…It’s not dead, but it’s not happening right now.” Back in 2021, it was revealed that writer John Fusco and Estevez had begun collaborating on another Young Guns installment, with Fusco even tagging Lou Diamond Phillips, Christian Slater and Kiefer Sutherland in a tweet.
Do you think Emilio Estevez should continue trying to get another Young Guns movie out there? What is your favorite scene from the movies? Let us know in the comments section below!