I typically don't post links to IMDB news stories, but this one is too intriguing to pass up. Apparently, Joel and Ethan Coen are planning to make a "Spaghetti Western" (meaning that it will be filmed in Spain?), and from the description, it sounds rather Cormac McCarthy-esque:

http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-12-26/#celeb3

Coen Brothers to Make Spaghetti Western

Filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen are set to make their goriest film ever - a Spaghetti Western featuring scenes of primitive torture methods. The brothers, whose notoriously gory new film No Country for Old Men has been tipped for Oscar glory, are desperate to make a film about the days of cowboys and Indians battling it out in the Wild West of America. But - as Joel warns - it won't be one for the faint-hearted. He says, "We've written a western with a lot of violence in it. There's scalping and hanging ... it's good. Indians torturing people with ants, cutting their eyelids off." Ethan adds, "It's a proper western, a real western, set in the 1870s. It's got a scene that no one will ever forget because of one particular chicken."

Even if it's set in a slightly different era, this almost sounds like an unofficial adaptation of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is interesting considering that the Coens just made an official McCarthy adaptation. I wonder if this movie will end up competing with Ridley Scott's planned Blood Meridian adaptation. In any case, I really want this story to be true.

BTW, is it really accurate to describe No Country for Old Men as notoriously gory?

I was thinking exactly the same thing, and the answer is no.

I have a suspicion that the phrase "spaghetti western" is merely being used by the blurb-writer as an erroneous synonym to "violent and brutal" and nothing more. The Coens never use the term themselves and Ethan's quote that "it's a proper western, a real western" sounds to me like he's specifically talking up its Americanness.

The last western that was "notoriously gory" was THE WILD BUNCH (1969). :P

. . . is there a difference between "violence" and "gore" . . . THE WILD BUNCH is certainly "violent", and ran into a now hard to believe attack from many members of the critical establishment at the time of its initial release, while SOLDIER BLUE (1970) seems to still be in the running for what some critics view as its "gore"; as the 2008 TIME OUT FILM GUIDE notes "the massacre itself is turned into a gleefully exploitative gore-fest of blood and amputated limbs", while the 2008 MALTIN says the "cavalry's slaughter of the entire villiage . . . remains almost unwatchable." . . . while it didn't seem extremely gory to me when I finally caught up with it on DVD last year, times and tastes have certainly changed over the years (although these film guides do not seem to update their initial critical comments after any subsequent viewings) . . .