Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid "Bonnie and Clyde. ..." we don't believe it, and we walk out of the theater wondering what happened to that great movie we were seeing until an hour ago." The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #11 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written. Over time, major American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator, gives 89% "Certified fresh" favorable score based on 46 reviews with an average score of 8.2/10, the site's critical consensus reads With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay and Burt Bacharach score,
The Wild Bunch his previous film "Major Dundee" (1965) and his firing from the set of "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965), Peckinpah's stock had improved following his critically acclaimed work on the television film "Noon Wine" (1966). An alternative screenplay available at the studio was "The Wild Bunch", written by Roy Sickner and Walon Green. At the time, William Goldman's screenplay "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that "The Wild Bunch", which had several similarities to Goldman's work, would be produced in order to beat "Butch Cassidy" to the theaters. By the