The director of "American Primeval" stops by IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about how he embarked on the toughest shoot of his career.

Creator Mark L. Smith's six-episode examination of scruffy, vicious people traversing the Utah Territory in 1857 also stars Taylor Kitsch and Dane DeHaan.

Given everything that’s stacked against our heroes and heroines, is there any possibility that the likes of Sara (Betty Gilpin), Devin (Preston Mota), Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), Isaac (Taylor Kitsch),

The series, now streaming on Netflix, depicts the brutality with which the Mormons sought to create a new world for their beliefs, the pride with which the native people held onto their ancestral lands, and the tragedy of the people just seeking to make a new home in the chaos. But is any of it true?

The 19th-century American West of American Primeval is a land of unyielding brutality, though nothing about this six-part Netflix series, premiering Jan. 9, is as violent as Peter Berg’s belligerently over-the-top direction.

Fans of Netflix’s American Primeval are eagerly awaiting updates on its future. The series follows a mother and son escaping their past while forming a found family in the harsh American West. Viewers are curious about the prospects for Season 2.

However, it saps anything resembling wistfulness from its Hollywood Western roots, complicating its chances of cornering the post-Yellowstone market (alongside the latter's many spin-offs). What's left is the husk of a beloved genre,