The film was written and directed by Walter Hill, and based on the 1978 stage play Fathers and Sons by Thomas Babe and the 1986 novel Deadwood by Pete Dexter.

It stars Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, and Diane Lane, and was released by United Artists on December 1, 1995.

In a flashback, Bill and his friend California Joe come upon an Indian burial structure with a lone warrior sitting atop it.

Despite Joe's warning that killing Indians "in a religious frame of mind" is bad luck, Bill shoots the man dead.

He then retires from the law and works as an actor and trick shooter in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.

Eventually winding up in Cheyenne, a man named Will Plummer, whom Bill crippled years earlier after killing his brother, calls him out.

After smoking, Bill has a disturbing dream about a time he and Joe were threatened by Indians after being caught shooting the tribe's buffalo.

A woman who works at the den tells a local prostitute, Lurline, about how often Bill visits to use the opium, and she shares this information with Jack.

It is revealed that when he left town for six months, Susannah married another man, who robbed Bill of his most prized possession: his gold pocket watch.

That night, he returns to the saloon, which is empty because a gold vein was discovered nearby, and everyone left to set up their claims.

Jack pulls a hidden derringer from his sleeve, gathers his nerve, and shoots Bill in the back of the head.

It was written by Thomas Babe, and focused on Hickok's last days in Deadwood, placing the action in the saloon where he was killed.

Hill took material from Dexter's novel for the atmosphere of the town and relied on Babe's play heavily for the third act, the last hours of Hickok.

"[1] The Zanucks and Walter Hill took the script to John Calley, president of United Artists, and the film was green-lighted at the end of January 1994.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Crowded with talent on either side of the camera, Wild Bill shoots itself in the foot with a surprisingly muddled take on the story of the titular folk hero.

He recognized the film's ambition, aiming for "elegy" and "poetry" in its final act, but ultimately described it as flawed, writing, "We can see where it's headed, although it doesn't get there.

"[6] In a positive review, Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the movie "succeeds as a character study of a man whose idiosyncratic code of justice eventually catches up with him", and complimented Jeff Bridges' acting as vital to the film's success.

[7] Variety, while also praising Jeff Bridges' performance, took a critical stance, observing that the film "comes to a near dead-stop in the final stretch".