Trainspotting’s John Hodge Rewriting Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur Project
Posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 by Brendon Connelly
The last time we talked about Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur movie, it was suggested that a new script was going to be called for, superceding the Warren Ellis draft and now, we’ve found out who the new writer will be. The lucky winner is John Hodge, probably most famous for having written Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. If his adaptation of Trainspotting is anything to go by, he can certainly make order out of rather sprawling and tangled narrative messes, so perhaps he’s a great choice for guaranteeing a driving through-line in this episodic, stop-start storyline.
At least when Ellis was at the Word Processor the film’s basic shape was to be “very specifically about the gathering of the Knights”. Cue Lock Stock style ensemble of British character actors. Variety have reported that the basic source material will be Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, but I can’t imagine the tone and flavour of a 15th century French romance being maintained under Ritchie’s directorship.
