Brad Pitt to star in Red Dead Redemption film says fake rumour

A source close to the star said: "Brad once walked past a videogame store on Hollywood Boulevard, and this game was in the window display. Is that enough? Is anyone actually buying this?"

Okay, it's Friday night and I should be out getting my drank on or dancing like a pilled-up nutter in some frightfully expensive nightclub or whatever, but instead I'm home and reporting on a news story that I can 99% guarantee is complete and total horseshit. Why? Eh, because it's kind of fun, that's why. And I can't dance.

Highly reputable source ShowbizSpy.com (current homepage headline: "Christina Applegate: 'My Appetite Is Out Of Control!!'") are claiming that Brad Pitt is planning a movie version of Rockstar's excellent Grand Theft Cowboy game, Red Dead Redemption. Sure, I guess that could happen in real life, at a push. A source did(n't) say:

Okay, let's play Devil's Advocate for a second here (and not the pinball version either). Every day, a hundred made-up stories are published like this on a hundred different websites. Occasionally, an unlikely story will get picked up by a slightly more credible site on a slow day. Then, a slightly more credible site than that will run with it too, and so on. Fast forward to now. Except my theory would mean that this site has any credibility.

But the point is, people - myself included - are happy to reprint it, despite knowing that it's most likely grade-A bollocks. That's because it's a fun rumour and it could feasibly happen. Red Dead Redemption's story is a little dry - grizzled cowpoke hunts down evil gang for safe return of wife and child - and Brad Pitt's last cowboy movie was a three-hour meditation on the nature of reputation and the perils of infamy, but whatevs. Horseys! Guns! Scalpings! Coyotes! More horseys!

Let's face it, if Hollywood can find the money to make a multi-million dollar franchise out of a small black plastic orb filled with noxious fluid, it can fling a sack marked 'loot' on the front lawn of the Pitt residence in return for a dumb cowboy movie.