New fantasy films in development: Excalibur, City of Fountains, The Darkest Hour

Guy Ritchie is slated to pull the sword from the stone, Shrek helmer Andrew Adamson has a new hush-hush, $100 million project, and Russia will be the target for the next alien invasion, according to Chris Gorak. 

It’s not unusual for rival studios to launch competing projects on the same theme or subject but here’s a new one – a single studio developing competing film projects. According to Pajiba, Warner Bros now has two Excalibur remakes on its slate. The first one, which has been on the cards for a while, is a Bryan Singer remake of the 1981 John Boorman film, which was a bit like Dynasty – lots of betrayal and adultery – but with a great big MacGuffin of a glowing sword to keep the action going. It looks dated now (the trailer is here) but was very successful at the time, and starred Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne and pioneer coffee seller Cherie Lunghi (Clooney undoubtedly watched her ads for inspiration to see how you hawk coffee with class).

The second is from a treatment by comic books artist and author Warren Ellis, which he announced he was working on last July. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be an adaptation of the UK-based X-Men spin-off of the same name, which he worked on and which featured Captain Britain, alongside Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Phoenix – but rather a more traditional take on the sword in the stone legend. The big news on this one is that Guy Ritchie is attached to turn another popular British tale into a right old Cockney knees-up direct.

According to an interview Ellis did with Aint It Cool, this version “differs from the prior 751 King Arthur movies in many ways, but perhaps most obviously in that it is very specifically about the gathering of the Knights.”

Oh dear. Can you envision it? King Arfur is a right royal geezer and he enlists his ol’ pal Merlin to help him get a crack team of Medieval England’s handiest sword-wielders together for the job of a lifetime. Meet Lance (speciality: knives), Perce (a bit useful with a club) and Galahad (he’s a funny feller but he knows dogs). Eugh.

We joke now, but remember how funny it sounded with we first learned that Holmes would be outfitted with bromance and oily, topless punch-ups? Well, we swallowed that crap pretty quickly, folks.

It sounds as though the Ritchie/Ellis version has the lead now, though both projects are apparently at the script stage. Bryan Singer has more projects piled up in front of him than Rogue has white hairs, and may have lost a bit of stature with Warners since the project was first mooted, whereas Ritchie is their new golden boy.

In other fantasy news, Variety is reporting that as the Shrek franchise is drawing to a close (there is one final film to come before the orgre takes his final bow), the man behind it, Andrew Adamson, is embarking on a new film project. The City of Fountains is set to be a $100 million CGI and live-action mix fantasy flick. Adamson and Joby Harold found a home for it after a successful pitch to LA-based Lightstream Pictures. The plot is being kept under wraps for now but may involve fountains (but not The Fountain, with a bit of luck).

Chris Gorak (who directed dirty bomb thriller Right At Your Door) is to direct The Darkest Hour, a new sci-fi thriller being developed by New Regent and Summit. Wanted director Timur Bebmambetov is to produce the film, which sees a group of children struggling to survive an alien attack on Russia – a plot that sounds a considerably better than Bekambetov’s other mooted producing gig, which features Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter.