I really like the idea of focusing on the really interesting Robert Ford character, who Casey Afflect apparently plays as incredibly unlikeable in a subtle, realistic kind of way.
And I personally loved Land, and only liked the Dawn remake, but I'm a Romero-zealot, so my opinion is far from objective.
Yeah, I'm not sure there has ever been a film that focused on the complex relationship between Bob Ford and Jesse James. In most films based on Jesse, the Ford character usually is little more than a cameo, and often appears at the very end, so when he does kill Jesse, we have no feelings one way or the other about him (Ford). Even in Walter Hill's excellent
The Long Riders (1980), the Fords (played by Nicholas and Christopher Guest) probably average a total of five minutes of screen time, tops. The book on which
Coward is based does an excellent job of filling in the blanks, with Bob initially an eager young worshipper of Jesse, who knows everything there is to know about the famous outlaw and his exploits, then, once he is accepted by Jesse into the gang, becomes an overanxious show-off to prove his mettle. And then when it dawns on him that he could be an even bigger name than Jesse by pulling off the ultimate act that the posses and the Pinkertons
couldn't do, his newfound "fame" is almost immediately tarnished by an angry public, and he lives out the rest of his days a haunted, paranoid man, much like Jesse was in the last years of his own life.
BTW, my favorite Romero film is
Martin, followed by the original
Dawn of the Dead.