Director Scott Cooper says he wrote Hostiles for actor Christian Bale as he is the "best actor working".

"I wrote it specifically for Christian Bale. Apart from being my closest pal, Bale is the best actor working. He has the ability to utterly and completely become the character that I and he have created," Cooper said in a statement.

"Bale has an ability to take what's written on the page and through his process, create a character that you could only have hoped/dreamed of," he added.

The film, set in 1892, stars Bale as a captain who agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family back home to tribal lands. The journey takes Bale and his detail from New Mexico to the grasslands of Montana. Hostiles is based on an original manuscript by the late Donald Stewart.

It is directed by Cooper from his own script, and also stars Rosamund Pike, Q'orianka Kilcher, Adam Beach, Rory Cochrane, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemons, Jonathan Majors and Timothee Chalamet.

Brought to India by PVR Pictures, "Hostiles" released in India on Friday.

On the writing process, he said: "It seems to me that there was a story that was really interesting about a legendary army captain who's been tasked with escorting a group of native American prisoners, known as Hostiles, from Mexico to Montana."