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EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has locked a deal to acquire the David Dobkin spec script Arthur & Lancelot for $2 million in a bidding war that involved Universal and Fox. Script is a $90 million budget contemporary re-imagining of the classic tale. Dobkin will direct, and he just completed the Universal comedy The Change-Up. CAA reps him. Dobkin will produce with Lionel Wigram, and Jeff Kleeman is exec producer. I am at Green Lantern screening and will fill in the details later but you have to wonder if Warner Bros is cornering the market on King Arthur tales. Bryan Singer’s developing a remake of Excalibur, the 1981 John Boorman film based on Thomas Malory’s 15th Century work, and then Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie has another version set up last year with Trainspotting scribe John Hodge. Will the first to pull the sword from the stone and get their movie into production be the winner? When a studio puts up that kind of money like was done for the Dobkin project, you can bet that is the one that takes precedence and you can expect the others to fade away.
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Green Lantern screening? My apologies.
The Change-Up looks awful…..freaky Friday for adults? Not expecting much from this….
I also thought Change-Up looked awful. And I hate Ryan Reynolds with a fiery passion. I told myself that there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ever pay to see this drivel.
But I saw a free screening last week and was pleasantly (almost shockingly) surprised. It was actually very funny in parts, fast-paced, and well-acted all around, especially by Jason Bateman, though Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde stood out too (and I didn’t even find Reynolds horribly annoying!). I think we’ll all be surprised by the reviews when they start coming out.
I’m not sure if that was an attempt at some sort of brag or what, but absolutely no one needed to know you were at a Green Lantern screening.
My guess is that Mike wants to tell us he’s willing to take one for the team, that he is prepared to sacrifice his hard earned $$$ to boldly go where (Just work with me here, okay?) not as many people as Warner Bros. hopes and needs will do, that he wants to see what the fuss is about, or not, whether the film really is as bad or just as not as good, that he’s a hobby masochist who’s got tired of slamming his gonads in the oven door, that… Oh hell! He just wanted to see the damn thing! So, Mike, was it good for you?
“contemporary reimagining” – yawn
kleeman is a god. the rest is just detail.
“13th Century, England. Arthur and Lancelot, drunk on mead, engage in yet another shouting match over who Guinivere loves more. They unbutton and start to pee — only to realize they’re in Merlin’s garden. The pissed off magician sends them to the 21st century — with a twist — they’re now in each others bodies! Hilarity ensues.”
Seriously, though, good on you, Mr. Dobkins! A spec that sold for $2 million? Way to keep an already robust spec market even healthier, sir.
It’s Friday…the movie is out. No longer considered a “screening” if you’re at AMC.
Congrats to all involved. Love Dobkin, Wigram and Kleeman! $2,000,000 is great news for everyone.
If they’re smart, the competing Arthur movies “would just fade away”, but given the ridiculous Snow White race to the box office going on in Hollywood right now, you have to ask yourself….whoever said people in Hollywood were smart?
Getting an original script sold today is like McDonald’s adding chinese food to it’s menu. Will take decades, cost millions of dollars and countless lives.
nice. happy for jeff kleeman. one of the best.
Great Ed. Does this mean you have given up?
Oh boy! Another Aurthurian movie. I am almost excited by this as I will be for the Musketeers reboot, the next vampire/lycanthrope flick, or the inevitable retelling of evil ETs descending to Earth. (On second thought, strike that last one – Cowboys vs. Aliens looks fresh & intriguing.)
IMO studios are killing their long-term viability for short-term thinking, super-saturating the market with genre-’spoliation & remakes.
The important detail of this story is “Script is a $90 million budget contemporary re-imagining of the classic tale”. So it uses the Arthur and Lancelot story and transplants it to a modern setting? Sounds like it could be interesting. Stress the COULD.
That being the case it shouldn’t effect the other potential King Arthur/Excalibur projects set up at the studio. Though I’d have thought that Bryan Singer would his fill of period action epics with WB’s Jack The Giant Killer leaving Guy Ritchie the front runner.
Considering that Dobkin was attached to Warner’s The Man From UNCLE for years and now that project will be a 60′s set espionage thriller directed by Soderburgh, I wouldn’t be surprised if this new project is Dobkin’s (modern) take on the UNCLE franchise or a modern Lethal Weapon esque two handed action thriller.
I know this is a site for peeps who work in show biz but let me offer an outsider’s take. I an 29 years old and think I represent the movie going public better than most of you. I’d say I Am America. Here’s what I like – NOISE. I like movies that are f-ing loud. What else I like – THINGS THAT FLY. Super-heroes are a must. Also fAST CARS, Vin Diesel drivin’ Diesel fightin’ with Rock – yeah!
Here’s what i DON’T WANT in movies – much of a plot. It’s old school to have plot. What else I don’t like – movies that are about women. The other night on cable I saw 15 minutes of a movie called Terms of Endearment and that shit absolutely would not fly with today’s public, we’ve evolved past it. Other stuff I don’t like – movie characters who act high and mighty. I also generally don’t like any movie that’s not a sequel of somethin’ already made. Only sequels is usually my policy.
I Am America.
this clearly comes from having played too many video games during your formative years.
I hope you’re wrong
and dwindling domestic box office says you are
if not, jumping into silver lake
LOL!!
Dobkin is not only a class act, he’s very creative.
Glad to see he penned the script.
Kleeman is rock solid too.
Win-win.
The story is slightly inaccurate in its wording — a “contemporary retelling” means that it’s the old tale told with a contemporary storytelling feel to it. The script is most definitely set in the Dark Ages and is not present day.
Aw, and I was just getting into the whole “Round Table in Space” motif.
Haha! I impressed myself too by going to the screening and I’m just a housewife from Westlake Village!
I would love to see someone do a film about the story of Balin and Balan from Mallory’s “Le Morte D’Arthur.” It’s the story of two brothers, both knights at Arthur’s round table, who try to follow the new ways of civilized behavior, but who keep slipping back into violence. One of them gets into a battle and unknowingly uses the the spear that pierced the side of Christ. Having the spear that wounded Christ spill human blood causes something like a nuclear annihilation. At the end of the story, the brothers, not recognizing each other in their armor, fight and kill each other. Yes, I know, it’s not a cheery story, but it could make a classic tragic film, if done in the style of the “The Seventh Seal.”
Kleeman is a great great guy.
Dobkin is the exact opposite.
-RnsW
Uh, I liked Wedding Crashers too but it was a modestly profitable comedy from 6 years ago that he didn’t even write. What about that says we should give him $2M for a spec just so we can pay someone else $175K to re-write it four times before a shake up at the studio puts everything goes into turnaround?
If it’s like the mafia and once you’re in, you’re in, okay, you got your golfing buddy to divert a pile of shareholder dividends into your bank account (minus 10%, natch), and bully for you, but barring that please to explain.