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),

Set during 1857's Utah War, 'American Primeval' lays out a world where love conquers little and indifference is the only path to survival. [REVIEW]

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.

Peter Berg directs an epic six-part drama about the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, in which more than 100 settlers were murdered by militant Mormons.

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,