Well, now that the “Avatar” trailer has been revealed to suck, Hollywood’s genre filmmakers can get back to work without fear of “awe” and “spectacle” being monopolized by James Cameron. A week after being announced as onboard a “Battlestar Galactica” redo over at Universal, Variety reports that Bryan Singer has signed on to produce and develop a remake of John Boorman’s “Excalibur.” The original was a badass swords and sorcery epic revolving around the retelling of the King Arthur myth, embracing the magic and outlandishness of the original legends. Likely this would be a far cry from the unloved grim-n-gritty retelling of “King Arthur” spearheaded by Jerry Bruckheimer from earlier this decade- check the numbers though… $200 million worldwide! Christ, that Bruckheimer can spin any stupid shit into box office gold!
Singer’s developing the project at Warner Bros. with an eye towards directing, but its believed he first has to deal with “Jack The Giant Killer,” a retelling of the Jack and the Beanstalk legend left over from the New Line Cinema era with superproducer Neal Moritz (“Torque”) attached. “Excalibur” has no script yet, but “Jack” is from the pen of Mark Bomback (“Race To Witch Mountain”) and theoretically is ready to shoot. DJ Caruso (“Disturbia”) was originally linked to direct “Jack” but it looks like this is the first time Singer will be working at WB/Legendary Pictures since he botched “Superman Returns” and produced “Trick r Treat,” a movie that still seeks distribution years after completion. Just goes to show you how people in Hollywood are always willing to get back in bed with you no matter how bad the experience was.
But is Singer truly desperate? The Variety article mentions Singer flirting with Fox regarding “X-Men: First Class,” which would be a surprise considering how badly Fox mismanaged Singer’s original vision for the first two films in that series. Might this be a mea culpa, since “Wolverine” didn’t exactly set the world on fire, diminishing prospects for further adventures in that world? Brett Ratner’s third film in the series outgrossed the first two, but there’s gotta be a reason why Fox immediately scuttled a fourth film instead of capitalizing on that momentum.
Singer took a lot of heat for “Valkyrie,” but the movie was his fourth straight $200 million worldwide hit, so it’s not a surprise to see him taking his sweet time between projects. For a brief time, he was also attached to “The Prisoners” with Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg, but they’ve moved on. Singer’s also long been linked to a movie called “U Want Me 2 Kill Him?” a conceptually-titled true story about an internet murder that never gained traction, probably because it was written by Fernley Phillips, who’s first script, Jim Carrey’s “The Number 23,” was probably (thankfully?) his last. Regardless, the true story itself is really fascinating, and the movie was to be based on the Vanity Fair article that gave the story national coverage- you can read that fascinating account here.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter (aren’t they always?) suggested that the Bryan Singer “Excalibur” project and an untitled King Arthur project written by comic book super genius Warren Ellis were one in the same. We asked Ellis about this possibility this morning. His response? “No.” So, there are parallel King Arthur movies being fast tracked, and while the proposal of this new “Excalibur” remake is that it’s going to be a hard-edged retelling, well, then clearly they haven’t investigated Ellis’ project. Anyone who has read any of the author’s comic book work, particularly his independent stuff (he also has a fairly regular gig with Marvel), or has seen his great “G.I. Joe” anime project, knows that he likes to keep things fairly outré. – Drew Taylor
