“From nothing comes a king,” promises this new trailer for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and the filmmaker’s certainly found a new way into the Arthurian mythos. Starring Charlie Hunnam as the man with the Excalibur, King Arthur looks more action-packed and stylish than we’re used to seeing in our ancient English folklore.
The clip, which is set to air during today’s AFC/NFC broadcasts, opens with Hunnam’s Arthur intoning, “I am here now because of you – you created me.” Who the “you” is remains something of a mystery, which presumably will be answered when the film hits theaters May 12.
In addition to Hunnam, King Arthur stars Jude Law as his power-grabbing uncle, and Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen and Eric Bana. Ritchie directs from a screenplay by Joby Harold and Ritchie & Lionel Wigram, with a story by David Dobkin and Joby Harold. The film is produced by Akiva Goldsman, Joby Harold, Tory Tunnell, and Steve Clark-Hall, Ritchie and Lionel Wigram. David Dobkin and Bruce Berman are executive producers.
The film will be distributed in North America by Warner Bros. Pictures and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
Ewan McGregor has just been set to star with Léa Seydoux in Zoe, the next film that Drake Doremus will direct. He will replace Charlie Hunnam, who has dropped out for scheduling issues. This has just happened, and it occurred while Doremus is getting ready for the Sunday Sundance premiere of the acquisition title Newness, the film that stars Nicholas Hoult, Laia Costa and Danny Huston.
Zoe, which is being financed by Stuart Ford’s IM Global, is scheduled to shoot in Montreal in April with Scott Free’s Michael Pruss producing with Doremus and Robert George. McGregor is about to open in T2 Trainspotting, the Danny Boyle-directed sequel to the cult favorite movie.
Written by The Beauty Inside’s Rich Greenberg, Zoe follows two colleagues at a revolutionary research lab who design technology to improve and perfect romantic relationships. As their work progresses, their discoveries become more profound than they could ever have imagined. UTA and United Agents rep McGregor.
Back in the days of yore — specifically July 2015 — EW brought you the first look at Charlie Hunnam as a gritty, wisecracking sovereign in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. A year and a half later, fans are still waiting to see the former Sons of Anarchy star pull the sword from that stone.
EW caught up with director Guy Ritchie, who’s putting the finishing touches on the special effects for the film (set for release on May 12), to talk about the delay and how he planned to make King Arthur a hero audiences in 2017 will care about.
We last spoke about a year and a half ago. Where are you in the process right now?
As of five minutes ago, it was the last visual effects meeting I had, so I am at the end of it, as of five minutes ago. It has gone on for some time.
The release date shifted three different times. What was the main reason for the date changing?
The date kept shifting, I think, simply because of competition. We could have wrapped up a year, but since we didn’t have to wrap up a year ago, you keep this visual effects things going on so that you can get the best out of them. But it’s such a crowded market out there, trying to find a weekend that you stand half a chance in is tough. That’s the only reason.
Did the shift allow you to do anything other than take more time with the special effects?
I quite like taking some more time because I can see the trouble people find themselves in by forcing a visual effect, which really does need more time. We’ve had the luxury of sitting back. If we did not have that luxury, your visual effects aren’t going to be there. We’ve had a year, haven’t we? We’ve have a year to improve them, and today is the last visual effects meeting. It’s a year’s extra work.
This King Arthur started as three different projects, including one you were developing. What was different about your initial project?
This is the one, essentially, except in this one we’ve got 300-foot elephants. Though really, that’s the only difference. It’s the same story, but this one has more of an element of fantasy in it, which is consistent within the tone, but other than that, it’s pretty much the same story.
Your big idea was to bring this guy down to the street level, right?
Yeah. I quite like John Boorman’s Excalibur, and I think Boorman touched on things that I thought, “Oh, I’d like to have a go at that.” He did a pretty good job at some aspects of it. It’s a genre that’s hard to tackle, and I wanted to tackle it.
What makes it a hard genre to crack?
All genres are hard to crack if you’re familiar with a particular genre. It’s easy for a filmmaker to stay within the genre he’s familiar with. It’s more challenging when you get outside of that. You have to use reference points that you’re sympathetic to. What is a reference point to King Arthur that you’re sympathetic to. The only thing I could think of is elements of Excalibur. There wasn’t anything to copy, right? I have opinions about what they got right, what they didn’t get right. So now you’re going, “Well, you have to run that gauntlet. Are you funny? Are you unfunny? Are you funny and serious?” All of that takes a while to find your tone and your voice, and it’s challenging, like in Sherlock Holmes. That was a genre I hadn’t tackled before, so you have to find a voice within that. So it’s challenging, and you doubt yourself. Then you’re confident and you doubt yourself and you’re confident again. For me, I’m trying to think of a film in the genre that I really like…. And I’m quite quiet on that. There isn’t too many. There are elements within different films that I really like, but as a whole film, there’s not one I can think of.
Do you think audience expectations have changed in the last 10 or 15 years?
Yes. Film, like everything else, is subject to fashion. If you watch how films were made 15 years ago and watch how they’re being made now, the tonality is totally different. We’ve moved toward technically exponentially, so you can get away with visual effects from 15 years ago. But you have a broader tapestry, which means you can be more ambitious about the visual effects. In turn, it affects everything else. Once you change the tone and rhythm of one thing, it affects the tone and rhythm of everything else.
What did having Charlie Hunnam mean for that task, of updating Arthur?
To be fair to Charlie, Charlie won the role because he paid for his own flight. I wasn’t even thinking about Charlie. He wanted to be screen tested, and he won it, as did Astrid [Berges-Frisby]. They won it through the good, old-fashioned route.
What did you need from the guy who was going to be your Arthur?
I need someone who was going to understand my vision and have a similar disposition. I needed to realize that we were going to be on the same page, so that anything I said was going to mean something to him. I needed him to trust me. Those things were conspicuous in Charlie.
You can read the full interview with Guy Ritchie over at EW.com
When Charlie Hunnam agreed to play 19th-century explorer Percy Fawcett — opposite Robert Pattinson as fellow traveler Henry Costin — in the film adaptation of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. Giving Hunnam only five days between filming on King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Lost City of Z, the five-month shoot took him away from longtime girlfriend with essentially no means of contact.
The solution? A letter a day — or that’s what Hunnam promised, anyway.
“We went to Colombia, and the mail system doesn’t really work very well,” Hunnam said. “It’s completely unreliable. I received a letter from her, and I realized that from the tone of it and things she was saying that she hadn’t received the two letters that I sent before.”
With timely letters not really in the cards, Hunnam decided to go even more Method in portraying the explorer-cum-absentee father Fawcett. He stopped writing altogether. “Which obviously makes me sound like a total bastard, appropriately so,” Hunnam said. “But I was very apologetic.”
The separation, however, helped Hunnam understand Percival Fawcett’s obsession. “One of the things that [director James Gray] and I felt strongly that we wanted to explore in the film,” Hunnam said, “was the conflict between family life and the exterior demands that are made on us and the social and economic demands that we all need to deal with in life, being balanced or in conflict with the internal drive, to be the people we want to be and achieve the things that we want to achieve.”
But where does that leave things with Hunnam and the girlfriend he promised to write to? Well, while Colombian mail system failed him, the jewel market did not.
“I had the benefit of shooting in Colombia, where they have rather lovely and somewhat cheap emeralds,” Hunnam says. “My girlfriend is a jewelry designer, so I was able to come back with an appropriately sized gift. It didn’t remedy all of the trouble I was in, but it got me halfway there.”
Smart man.
The Lost City of Z will be released April 14. Before that, you can see an exclusive new photo of Hunnam and Pattinson from the film above.
IM Global will fully finance the love story “Zoe,” starring Lea Seydoux and Charlie Hunnam with Drake Doremus directing.
The picture will be produced by Scott Free’s Michael Pruss alongside Doremus, and Robert George. Ridley Scott will executive produce along with IM Global CEO Stuart Ford, President of Production Greg Shapiro and Kate Buckley.
IM Global is also handling international sales starting at the American Film Market next week with UTA representing domestic rights. Production is planned to start in Montreal in April, 2017.
Doremus’ credits include “Like Crazy,” “Equals” and “Breath In.” He is directing “Zoe” from a script by Rich Greenberg, in which two colleagues at a revolutionary research lab design technology to improve and perfect romantic relationships. As their work progresses, their discoveries become more profound.
Hunnam starred in “Pacific Rim” and “Sons of Anarchy.” He will be seen next year in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and James Gray’s “The Lost City of Z.”
Seydoux starred in “Spectre” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
“Greg and I are both long time admirers of Drake’s talent,” Ford said. “With ‘Zoe,’ we feel as if he is come up with a potentially commercial and critical success, and he has already attached an outstandingly talented cast in Charlie and Lea. We’re genuinely excited about the film’s global box office potential.”
