Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar's next project will be the short film Strange Way of Life, and it's a movie he says could be his "answer to Brokeback Mountain." At one point, Almodovar could have pursued directing Brokeback Mountain, but prefers not to work within the "limitations" that come with directing Hollywood films. But his new short has a similar premise to Brokeback Mountain, the Ang Lee-directed romantic drama about two cowboys who fall in love, and Almodovar's film similarly has two major stars in its lead roles.

In Strange Way of Life, a Western, Ethan Hawke (The Black Phone, Moon Knight) will be playing a local sheriff while Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Wonder Woman 1984) will co-star as another gunslinger living on the opposite side of the desert. With one seeking out the other, a showdown is forthcoming between the two, but it sounds like it results in an encounter that's more intimate than violent. As Almodovar explains, per IndieWire:

"It could be like my answer to Brokeback Mountain. So one of them travels through the desert to find the other. There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate. You can guess (that it will be romantic). I mean, masculinity is one of the subjects of the movie.”

Strange Way of Life is scheduled to begin shooting in August, primarily in Spain’s Almería region. While Almodovar is not intentionally referencing famous Spaghetti Westerns such as Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, this new film will be shot at the same location. The director had previously held rehearsals over Zoom with the lead stars, which he said wasn't ideal, but both Hawke and Pascal were on location for separate projects.

Related: Brokeback Mountain: Looking Back at the Groundbreaking LGBTQ+ Movie

Pedro Almodovar Almost Directed Brokeback Mountain

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So, what happened with Pedro Almodovar and Brokeback Mountain? Almodovar says he's happy with the film that Ang Lee directed, but he doesn't regret turning down the chance to direct that film. Almodovar explains that he would have wanted to ramp up the intimacy if he were to helm Brokeback Mountain and did not imagine Hollywood producers would have allowed him to do so at the time the movie was filmed.

"I think Ang Lee made a wonderful movie, but I never believed that they would give me complete freedom and independence to make what I wanted. Nobody told me that — they said, ‘You can do whatever you want,’ but I knew that there was a limitation... The relation between these two guys is animalistic. It was a physical relationship. The punch of the movie comes when they have to separate, and Heath Ledger discovers that he can’t think about leaving. That’s a strong discovery. But until that moment, it is animalistic, and for me it was impossible to have that in the movie because it was a Hollywood movie. You could not have these two guys f***ing all the time.”

Brokeback Mountain was subjected to censorship for its release in many overseas territories, but was very well-received by American audiences and critics. Ang Lee won the Oscar for Best Director with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana getting the win for Best Adapted Screenplay and Gustavo Santaolalla winning Best Original Score. Both lead stars, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, had also been nominated for acting Oscars and the film was up for Best Picture.