Cole Hauser Sets Up Pale Horse, a Thriller Based on a Real FBI Undercover Career
Cole Hauser is lining up a new project, and it is based on a real undercover investigation. On Monday 9 November, Deadline reported that Constantin Film and Hauser's company, American Outlaw Entertainment, will develop an action thriller called Pale Horse.
The film follows Scott Payne's 28-year career as an undercover agent for the FBI, the United States federal police force. Payne is now retired. The project is based on Code Name: Pale Horse, a true-crime memoir he wrote with Michelle Shephard. The book has been a New York Times bestseller.
The story centres on two of Payne's assignments. In one, he infiltrated The Base, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group, in Georgia. In the other, Operation Roadkill, he spent two years inside the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Massachusetts, posing as a member of the group.
Hauser is being developed as a possible star. He will also produce, alongside his partner Randall Batinkoff, who is adapting the screenplay. Robert Kulzer of Constantin Film is a producer too. Payne and Constantin's Oliver Berben will serve as executive producers, which means they hold an overseeing role on the financing and creative side rather than doing the day-to-day filming.
Hauser is best known for playing Rip Wheeler in Yellowstone, the drama about a Montana ranching family. He also stars in and is an executive producer on the sequel, Dutton Ranch. American Outlaw is also developing Blood Aces, a project with Sylvester Stallone and Balboa Productions at MGM Television.
Deals like this are often the first step in a long process. A project can be developed for years before a studio commits to making it, and many never reach cinemas or screens at all. For now, the news is simply that a real-life undercover story has found its producers, and a leading man is attached to play the lead role.
Payne's memoir gives the project its source material. Pale Horse will need a writer, financiers, and a distributor before anyone can say when audiences might see it. None of those pieces has been announced yet.
