(Credits: Far Out / Fox Searchlight Pictures )
Tue 30 September 2025 19:45, UK
Every actor, filmmaker, and actor-turned-filmmaker has at least one passion project they spend years trying to get made, and Robert Redford was no different. However, the difference was that he’d already brought it to the screen twice before the third time finally marked the charm.
It was inevitable that the ‘New Hollywood’ icon would move behind the camera eventually, and when he did, his debut feature, Ordinary People, won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’. A year later, in 1981, he founded the Sundance Institute, so it’s an understatement to call it a career-defining period.
By the end of the decade, Redford had helmed his second feature and added producing to his ever-expanding list of duties, and in 1986, he purchased the rights to author Tony Hillerman’s series of mystery novels following Navajo Nation Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, with the hope of making them the centrepiece of a film series. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Five years later, the erstwhile Sundance Kid executive produced The Dark Wind, but things didn’t go as planned. Starring Lou Diamond Phillips and Fred Ward as Leaphorn and Chee, it failed to secure theatrical distribution in the United States and was sent straight to video, with Redford’s disagreements with director Errol Morris throughout production leaving him frustrated with the results.
“That was a false start,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It was miscast. It was ill-conceived, and I didn’t think it was the right beginning for the series.” Initially, he’d planned that “every 18 months, this little movie would come out” based on Hillerman’s books, but in addition to the adaptations being “so complexly difficult to mount,” Redford found “no support” for his vision.
Fast forward another five years, and he tried again, executive producing 2002’s made-for-television film Skinwalkers, which featured Wes Studi and Adam Beach as Leaphorn and Chee, with his son, James, writing the script. It did at least give rise to two sequels, A Thief of Time and Coyote Waits, but Redford still wasn’t satisfied.
At long last, his decision to persevere with adapting Hillerman’s novels until he felt he’d gotten it right paid off when the TV series Dark Winds premiered in June 2022. The third season concluded in April 2025, and it’s already been renewed for a fourth run. Not only that, but it even became a full circle moment when a surprise cameo appearance marked Redford’s last-ever onscreen credit.
After a six-year absence from being in front of the cameras following Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, Redford made an unannounced return to acting in the third season’s premiere, which aired in March 2025. A full 39 years after he’d acquired the rights to Hillerman’s work, he played a role in the different version he’d executive-produced, and the one that’s won the most acclaim.
When Redford passed, his fellow executive producers released a shared statement celebrating how his “creative inspiration is woven into the fabric of Dark Winds, and we’re eternally grateful for his stewardship,” a far cry from the early 90s when the legendary actor had rued how his first attempt had gone awry.
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