Back in January 2020, TV Line reported that Epix will be developing a series, Warlord Chronicles, based on The Warlord Trilogy from author Bernard Cornwell. The three books that take place within the world of King Arthur are titled The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur.
The Ronin has since learned that Otto Bathurst is attached to Warlord Chronicles as both director and producer. Otto’s experience with television includes shows such as Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror, His Dark Materials, and the Amblin Television live-action Halo series that will air on Paramount+ in 2022.
THE WINTER KING – A former warrior sworn to Arthur and now an elderly monk, Derfel tells the story of how Arthur became a warlord in Dark Age Britain despite illegitimacy to the throne. After being banished to Armorica by his father, the High King Uther Pendragon, Arthur returns to protect the new king, his infant nephew Mordred.
Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe novels was developed into a British television series starring Game of Thrones star Sean Bean and The Saxon series adapted into Netflix’s The Last Kingdom.
It was recently announced that Bathurst’s BBC London gangster series Peaky Blinders starring Cillian Murphy would be ending after Season 6 as mentioned by outlets like Variety.
A24 will be releasing the visually stunning fantasy film The Green Knight from filmmaker David Lowery that is loosely based on the Arthurian poem Sir Gawain & The Green Knight. Dev Patel’s Sir Gawain is a member of King Arthur’s Knights of The Round Table, being part of the public domain allows the studio not to worry about rights issues and gives them creative freedom to tinker with the mythology.
THE GREEN KNIGHT – An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table.
The film releases in July 30 and has some extremely impressive visual effects shots from the wonderful Weta Digital, the high-profile effects house has some experience world-building with Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies.
I believe that A24 and David Lowery have an opportunity here to do something special with The Green Knight by slowly developing their own fantasy franchise with reasonably budgeted standalone R-rated films tackling various points of ancient myths. It’s also fiscally responsible to spend money on one movie at a time instead of pouring in a huge amount of money on a trilogy upfront. There are plenty of other characters worth exploring in solo films such as Merlin and Sir Lancelot among other stories linked to the Arthurian legends alone.
With the popularity of Game of Thrones, it was apparent that adult audiences are very much interested in fantasy genre material and hopefully The Green Knight can scratch that itch for the time being. I think the studio would be smart to at least consider having Lowery produce or direct some follow-ups of The Green Knight before branching off to other legends.
Once they’ve explored enough Arthurian tales they could move on to other myths such as Beowulf, Greek epic The Odyssey, the adventures of demigods like Perseus or Hercules, and Sigurd & The Dragon alongside the other tales in the massive world of Norse mythology. Unlike other studios perusing public domain material, they could assemble a great group of filmmakers to really bring life to these ancient stories by putting some real effort into developing them as real feature films, not sequel bait.
Lowery is currently busy shooting the Disney movie Peter Pan & Wendy in Vancouver.
While Zack Snyder has been suggesting he’ll be moving on from DC Comics projects in the future, that doesn’t seem to have stopped his fans from demanding he return to the franchise after the release of his version of Justice League heading to HBO Max on March 18th. However, a new non-DC project was apparently revealed by Snyder during a chat with Minutemen (spotted by CBR). As the director, who is a big fan of John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, has teased early development on his own project covering the iconic Arthurian mythology.
SNYDER: “I’m working on something but we’ll see. I’ve been thinking about some kind of retelling, like, real sort of faithful retelling of that Arthurian mythological concept. We’ll see. Maybe that will come at some point.”
It will be interesting to see if the project lands at Netflix, where Zack Snyder was able to sell Army of The Dead after he couldn’t secure a proper budget for the horror-action flick elsewhere. Netflix is keen on the fantasy genre with two projects taking place within the world of The Witcher and they recently landed the film/television rights to Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian.
Given that the Arthurian stuff is in the public domain it could allow Snyder to find a comfortable home for the project and getting the budget he needs to make it properly without having to worry about it being a studio IP.
John Boorman made his R-rated Excalibur after he couldn’t get his mature Lord of The Rings film together and was instead turned into an animated feature by Ralph Bakshi. Another mature feature set within the Arthurian mythology is eventually going to be released by A24 with David Lowery’s The Green Knight.
Warner Bros. attempted to launch a King Arthur/Knights of The Round Table franchise starting with the Guy Ritchie film but it failed to connect with audiences killing development of the multiple films they had been planning for each of the Knights.
I’ll be curious to see if Snyder actually wants to attempt a real fantasy project or some sort of genre hybrid. 300 has been the closest thing to a fantasy project from Zack but also happened to be a comic book adaptation.
THE RONIN 