Thrust! Parry! Riposte!

Is The Three Musketeers a good subject for a conceptual hip-hop album? Probably not. Is The Three Musketeers a good subject for a film? More likely, thanks to all that swashbuckling action and derring-do, daubed onto a rich historical canvas. Two movie versions of Alexandre Dumas' novel are currently in the pipeline, with one landing a US distribution deal and the other reportedly circling potential directors.

The story of these dual duellers is not only that of young d'Artagnan and his noble musketeer buddies battling the dastardly machinations of slimy old Cardinal Richelieu, it is also a tale of independent versus establishment, as one of the new Three Musketeers has been set up outside the major US studios, while the other is being developed with the full clout of Warner Bros. behind it. And it is with news of the latter version with which we shall today kick off our Muske-news round-up.

It was Sherlock Holmes that prompted Warners to reach for the book shelf, in the hope of finding another adventure classic to update for the mallrat crowd. Though it was somewhat overshadowed by the record-breaking antics of Fox's Avatar, WB's update of the Baker Street sleuth still proved to be a very tasty money-spinner for them, with a worldwide take to date of more than $450m. That success ensured that Robert Downey Jr. will be returning in a sequel, and it has also prompted the studio to ask producer Lionel Wigram – the driving force behind the Guy Ritchie-directed Holmes movie – to oversee a new Musketeers film as well. British writer Peter Straughan has already been assigned to pen the script (which perhaps not a happy development, given that his How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Men Who Stare at Goats screenplays failed to make the best of their respective source materials), and now the 24 Frames blog at The LA Times is claiming that two possible directors for the project have been identified.

The hombre supposedly at the top of the Warners and Wigram wanted list is David Frankel. Now, you might immediately be saying, “Who he?”, but you will surely be at least aware of his two most recent movies, The Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me, which scooped half-a-billion dollars in theatrical receipts between them, despite having one-tenth of the budget or pre-release coverage of the average comic book blockbuster. Frankel is already working with Warners on an animated adaptation of Septimus Heap: Magyk (first in a magic-based children's book series that has been described as the next I-really-don't need-to-tell-you-what), which might be why there is supposedly a second name in the Musketeers directorial frame – Bourne Identity and Jumper man Doug Liman. Due to deliver Valerie Plame thriller Fair Game later this year, Liman might fancy Three Musketeers as a comparatively breezy assignment (insomuch as any major-budget studio pic can be characterised as 'breezy'), ahead of diving into the Attica prison riot movie on which he is due to collaborate with Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher.

And what about the other Three Musketeers? Well, this one is already much further down the road, with a late summer date pencilled in for the commencement of principal photography. Filming in 3D, direction is coming from Paul W. S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Alien vs. Predator, Death Race), who is also co-producing via his Impact Pictures production company. The finance for the project is being put up by the Germany-based Constantin Films, which has an established affiliation to Anderson via the Resident Evil franchise (the latest instalment of which, Afterlife, is due in cinemas later this year), and most recently delivered the sci fi flop Pandorum. Interestingly, given that there is never any shortage of angry shouters eager to decry him as a soggy-brained hack, Anderson has penned the script for his Three Musketeers in conjunction with Andrew Davies, who is best-known for such 'quality' small-screen literary adaptations as Pride and Prejudice, The Way We Live Now and Bleak House, and was also the director's tutor when he was a film and literature student at Warwick University in the 1980s (while we're on the subject, Davies still owes us his promised telly version of James Hawes' satire Speak For England). Anderson's movie appeared to receive a boost last week when Deadline Hollywood announced that Summit Entertainment had already snapped up US distribution rights; although it was also reported that Twilight abs-wielder Taylor Lautner had passed on a role, presumably that of d'Artagnan.

There have of course been more than a few prior screen incarnations of Dumas' heroic quartet. Perhaps the best-known are the Richard Lester-directed all-star epics of the mid-1970s, produced by the Superman father-son team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind, and in which Michael York, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain and Oliver Reed saddled up as the musketeers (1989's ill-fated Return of the Musketeers found Chamberlain making way for C. Thomas Howell as the son of Reed's Athos). The '90s found Chris O'Donnell teaming up with Brat Packers Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland - unfortunately just at the precise moment in time where having Brat Packers in your film was the tongue sandwich of death as far as audiences were concerned. Plus that Three Musketeers movie spawned that Bryan Adams-penned All for Love record (also featuring Sting and Rod Stewart. Monsieur, truly with these decrepit, gravelly-voiced crooners you are spoiling us), which achieved the awfully impressive/impressively awful feat of being even worse than his Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves tune. Meanwhile, a far older gang of musketeers showed up in Randall Wallace's Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer The Man in the Iron Mask, in the rugged shapes of Gabriel Byrne, Gérard Depardieu, Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich. And who could forget Dogtagnan and the Three Muskehounds cartoon show? No-one who hasn't undergone rigorous electro-shock treatment and a partial lobotomy, that's for sure.