CBS Television Studios will revive creator Sam Peckinpah's TV western "The Rifleman" for executive producer, director Chris Columbus, based on the classic 1958 western series of the same name.
The new series will follow Civil War hero 'Lucas McCain', a sharpshooter with a haunted past, who moves to the uncharted New Mexico territory to raise his son 'Mark'. There, he joins forces with the 'Sheriff' to protect his new town and become its unofficial guardian.
In the original series, Peckinpah wrote and directed many of the best episodes from the first season, basing characters and situations on real-life scenarios from his childhood growing up on a ranch. His insistence on violent realism and complex characterizations, as well as his refusal to sugarcoat the lessons he felt the Rifleman's son needed to learn about life, soon put him at odds with the show's producers at Four Star and he left the show, to create another TV series "The Westerner", followed by directing the western features "Major Dundee" and "The Wild Bunch".
The trick feature of The Rifleman's 'rifle' was a screw pin attached to the large loop lever which was positioned so as to trip the trigger when the ring was slammed home, thus allowing Lucas to rapid-fire the rifle, similarly to a semi-automatic rifle.
McCain fires shots from this rifle during the opening credits, swings the rifle to cock it, then reaches for another round from his shirt pocket.
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