Competing King Arthur Film MAN AT ARMS To Be Directed By Jonathan Liebesman

Guy Ritchie has started production on Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur, the first in a planned franchise of six movies based on the King Arthur legend. But because this is Hollywood, and apparently competing projects have become an inevitability for everything in the public domain (see: the billion Robin Hood movies currently in development), there's another film in the works that uses the characters from the King Arthur legend but won't be featured in Knights of the Round Table's cinematic universe.

Deadline reports that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Battle: Los Angeles director Jonathan Liebesman will direct Man at Arms, a movie about an aging Lancelot that's described as being similar to Clint Eastwood's classic western Unforgiven. After his love affair with Guinevere destroys Camelot, Lancelot is bent on making amends for his previous wrongdoing. I wonder if they'll get Richard Gere to play Lancelot, since he already played that part in First Knight back in the mid-'90s. Anything's better than Ioan Gruffudd's version in 2004's King Arthur (pictured).

So...yeah. This story may be the most representative of the entire state of the industry as any I've seen in a long time: a hack director with no vision taking on a gritty version of a public domain story despite a competing six-part franchise planned at a studio across town. Yep, that pretty much sums it up.