Willie Nelson's 1986 western Red Headed Stranger also adapted his hit album of the same name. While Willie Nelson is obviously best known for his music, he's had quite a prolific acting career too. One of his earliest leading roles came with 1980 drama Honeysuckle Rose, and he also had a small but key role in Michael Mann's directorial debut Thief the following year. Over the years he's made quite a few westerns with friend Kris Kristofferson like The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, but he's also appeared in comedies like The Dukes of Hazzard and even played himself in the likes of the second Austin Powers movie.
The Red Headed Stranger album arrived in 1975 to critical acclaim and was a huge success upon release. The album told the story of a preacher who murdered his wife and her lover and becomes an outlaw before seeking redemption. Nelson soon became obsessed with the idea of turning Red Headed Stranger into a movie, which began a prolonged spell in development hell that lasted a decade.
While Willie Nelson saw Red Headed Stranger as a star vehicle for himself, Universal - who first optioned the project - wanted Robert Redford instead. The Redford version was budgeted at a healthy $14 million, but Redford later exited and Nelson later set it up at HBO with famed western helmer Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) set to direct. This also fell apart, and Nelson finally pulled it together as an indie production, co-starring Morgan Fairchild and Katharine Ross. The Red Header Stranger movie finally arrived in 1986 but received largely mixed reviews.
It's also hard to track down information on how Red Headed Stranger did financially, though it doesn't appear to have been much of a hit. Still, the Nelson fronted western has gathered a loyal following in the years since it debuted. It's very much a western in the traditional vein and offers little in the way of reinvention of classic tropes. It may even feel quite dated to modern eyes, and the preacher's murder of his wife and her lover later on in the story - and essentially getting away with the crime - is pretty unsettling.
That said, Red Headed Stranger still carries an interesting tone and unique feel compared to other movie westerns, and the murky morality of the title character only adds to that. Nelson has since joked the movie would have been better had Redford starred, though Clint Eastwood may have been a better fit. Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger seems to have been largely forgotten, but it's easy to find online either for fans of cult westerns or the singer himself.