ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS Trailer: The Reimagined Restoration of a 15-Year Old Western in Theaters This October (Exclusive)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS RIDES INTO THEATERS OCTOBER 16, DIGITAL & VOD NOVEMBER 17

 

Filmmaker Tanner Beard Reimagines The Legend of Hell’s Gate with New Footage, Characters, Visual Effects and an All-New Score

 

The Western Stars Lou Taylor Pucci, Eric Balfour, Henry Thomas, Tanner Beard and Clive Standen

 

Fifteen years after filmmaker Tanner Beard first brought his Texas Western The Legend of Hell’s Gate: An American Conspiracy to the screen, he is returning to the frontier—and rewriting the legend. Strike Back Studios will release ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS, an extensively reimagined Western starring Lou Taylor Pucci (Evil Dead, “Physical”), Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Henry Thomas (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, “The Haunting of Hill House”) Tanner Beard (“Landman”), and Clive Standen (“Vikings”) in select Texas theaters beginning October 16, 2026. The film will celebrate its red carpet premiere in Dallas on October 6, followed by its Digital and On Demand debut November 17.

 

What began as a 15th-anniversary restoration of Beard’s 2011 Western became something much bigger. Beard returned behind the camera to shoot additional and entirely new footage on the Universal Studios backlot, while digitally remastering the original film, restoring deleted scenes and introducing new characters, creating visual effects and commissioning a completely new score from composer Jamie Christopherson. The result is ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS—a newly constructed version of the story that Beard considers his definitive vision and finishing a conversation he started 15 years ago.

 

“Fifteen years later, I had the opportunity to go back into this world with everything I’ve learned as a filmmaker since we made the original. This stopped being a restoration pretty quickly. We were shooting new scenes, bringing characters back, rebuilding the sound and music and finding an entirely new rhythm for the story. Once Upon a Time in Texas became the movie I always knew was hiding somewhere inside this legend. My 25 year old self got to collaborate with my 40 year old self to bring this story to life the way I always meant for it to be seen.” — Tanner Beard

 

Set across two eras of the American West, the film follows Isaac McKinnon, whose search for his long-lost brother takes him from San Francisco in 1905 back to Texas in 1876, where he becomes entangled in a violent chain of betrayals, gunfights and events destined to become frontier legend.

 

Along the way, documented history collides with Western mythology as figures including Doc Holliday, Bass Reeves, Belle Starr, Jesse James, John St. Helens and Sam Bass emerge within a story where the line between what happened and what was passed down through generations begins to disappear.

 

Part mystery, part frontier adventure and part meditation on how legends are born, ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS revisits the mythology of the Old West through the eyes of a filmmaker returning to his own story 15 years later.

 

The film from Silver Sail Entertainment is written and directed by Tanner Beard and produced by Suzanne Weinert, Noor Ahmed and Tanner Beard, with an original score by Jamie Christopherson.

 

Strike Back Studios will release ONCE UPON A TIME IN TEXAS in select Texas theaters beginning October 16, 2026, followed by Digital and On Demand November 17, 2026. Blu-ray and streaming releases are planned for February 2027.