Guy Ritchie's 'Knights Of The Roundtable: King Arthur' Pushed Back To 2017

Next summer was meant to bring Guy Ritchie's first venture into fantasy with Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur, but now Warner Bros. Pictures has decided to push the film back from its original July 22nd, 2016 release date to a release early in 2017 instead. Is the studio no longer confident in the film? Are there problems behind the scenes? The reason for having King Arthur delayed is apparently more of a business decision than anything.

Deadline reports the King Arthur movie starring Charlie Hunnam as the legendary monarch will now open up on February 17th, 2017, nearly a full seven months later than initially planned. The Presidents Day weekend release has been chosen as part of a plan to take advantage of winter holidays for kids, especially in Western Europe where a big rollout is being planned.

Since the previous release was also set during a time when kids are usually off of school, that decision doesn't make much sense at first. But the summer can be very crowded at the box office, and the film was previously up against the new Ghostbusters, so that probably could have been a risky move for the studio.

But with a February release, there's far less competition, and Warner Bros. hopes to find the kind of success that 20th Century Fox's Kingsman: The Secret Service had in the same release window earlier this year. It's important to note that the film will still be up against some heavy hitters though, with Sony's Bad Boys 3 and Fox's The Maze Runner: The Death Cure also set for that date. However, the former could easily end up leaving that date since we haven't heard about the sequel making any progress in development).

The delay explains why we've yet to see a teaser trailer for the movie, and also why we haven't seen anything else besides those first look photos back in July. Now we probably won't see anything else from the movie until next summer.

In addition to Charlie Hunnam in the lead, Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur will also star Astrid Gerbes-Frisbey as Guinevere, Jude Law as the film's villain, Eric Bana as Arthur's father, and Djimon Honsou as a Merlin-like mentor to Arthur. The film is meant to be the beginning of a six film franchise, but the studio will have to see how this one does at the box office before any of those movies move forward. Stay tuned.