Warner Bros King Arthur Shared Universe Plan (& Why It Failed)
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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was supposed to set up a six-movie shared universe of sequels and spinoffs – but the plan failed.
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Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was supposed to set up a six-movie shared universe of sequels and spinoffs, but the plan failed at the first hurdle. Released in 2017, Legend of the Sword starred Charlie Hunnam as a streetwise Arthur, who discovers his royal lineage by pulling a sword from a stone and leads a rebellion against the evil King Vortigern (Jude Law).
The plan for an Arthurian shared universe was conceived when Warner Bros., inspired by the massive success of Marvel Studios’ The Avengers, went all-in on the idea of cinematic universes. In 2014 the studio announced a 10-movie slate of DC superhero films that would exist in a shared universe. Warner Bros. also created the MonsterVerse (a shared universe featuring Godzilla, King Kong, and other cinematic giants), the Conjuring universe, and the LEGO movie universe. The King Arthur universe was to be the studio’s fifth shared cinematic universe, but proved to be the only one that couldn’t even make it as far as a sequel.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was produced after a series of failed attempts to get a King Arthur movie off the ground, including a reboot of Excalibur and a fantasy script called Arthur & Lancelot. Warner Bros. believed that the six-movie plan, with Legend of the Sword effectively serving as the pilot for the various offshoots, was the key to success. Ultimately, however, it may have been the King Arthur universe’s undoing.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Was Supposed To Start A 6-Movie Universe
Before King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, the legendary figure’s last big-screen outing was 2004’s King Arthur, which starred Clive Owen in the title role. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, it broke the mold by portraying Arthur as a Roman commander called Artorius Castius, rather than as a medieval knight. King Arthur flopped at the box office and was poorly-received by critics, and today is barely remembered by most movie fans. Though Warner Bros. wasn’t deterred from developing its own King Arthur movie for long, that failure did seem to make the studio a lot more cautious about picking the right version of King Arthur to make.
In 2009, Warner Bros. revealed plans to make a remake of John Boorman’s beloved 1981 film Excalibur, with Bryan Singer set to direct. By 2011, Singer confirmed that those plans were dead, explaining that scheduling conflicts had delayed the start of production and that, in the interim, another King Arthur project had been pitched to Warner Bros. That project was Arthur & Lancelot, which actually came quite close to being made. Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington was lined up to play Arthur, and Joel Kinnaman was cast as Lancelot. Shortly before it was set to start filming, Warner Bros. abruptly took it off the release calendar. The studio reportedly became nervous when the budget ballooned from $100 million to $130 million, and slammed on the brakes in order to look for ways to cut costs.
So, how did Warner Bros. go from balking at a $130 million King Arthur movie to making a $175 million King Arthur movie just a few years later? It seems that the shared universe aspect was the key. At a time when The Avengers had seemingly proven that cinematic universes were the magic bullet for success, screenwriter Joby Harold pitched an idea for an Arthurian shared universe. The first movie would establish King Arthur (effectively the Iron Man of the universe), and separate movies would establish other major characters like Lancelot. This is why so many mainstays of King Arthurian legend – like Guinevere and Merlin – are absent from King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. The plan was for them each to have their own movie before finally coming together, Avengers-style, in an epic team-up.
How King Arthur Setup Sequels & Spin-offs
Much of the work that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword did in setting up spinoffs was the aforementioned absence of major characters like Lancelot and Guinevere. Astrid Bergès-Frisbey was originally set to play Guinevere, before her role was changed to that of a mysterious unnamed mage, and a spinoff movie could well have revealed her origins and real name (it was speculated that she’s actually Morgan le Fay). At the end of the movie, various knights of the round table are knighted at Arthur’s coronation. However, they’re a mix of original characters (like Sir George and Sir William) and lesser-remembered knights from the legends (like Sir Percival and Sir Bedivere). There are also a lot of empty seats at King Arthur’s round table, waiting to be filled.
Harold’s original script may well have set up sequels and spinoffs in other ways, but despite exciting Warner Bros. when it was first pitched, his vision never really made it to the screen. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was chopped and changed a great deal both before it started filming, and again afterwards. After being brought on board, Ritchie did rewrites with producer Lionel Wigram, and elements from Arthur & Lancelot were folded in as well.
An initial edit of this version of film was test screened for audiences, who hated it, resulting in a release date delay and extensive reshoots that attempted to fix the story. The end result was a movie that felt Frankensteined together (Arthur’s epic quest into the Darklands is turned into a confusing montage of random fights with giant bats and Rodents Of Unusual Size, intercut with the Mage and Bedivere talking about what will happen on the quest). While Legend of the Sword definitely has its highlights, like an attempted assassination that goes wrong, between the inflated budget and poor reviews it became one of the biggest box office bombs of the decade.
Though King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was projected from early on to be a box office flop – with reshoots having pushed the budget to $175 million, its release date pushed back several times, and rumors spreading that the movie was a mess – no one anticipated just how hard it would fail. Legend of the Sword actually finished third at the box office in its opening weekend, with a terrible debut of $15.4 million that put it behind Amy Schumer-led comedy Snatched.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword currently holds a score of 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers criticizing its over-reliance on CGI, the tiresome nature of the quick-cut, non-linear editing, Charlie Hunnam’s lacking qualities as a leading man, and the film’s story for being simultaneously over-packed and shallow. Ritchie’s filmmaking style was also called out for being woefully mismatched to a swords-and-sorcery tale, and underneath the flash there wasn’t much substance. Between the talk of production troubles and poor test screenings and the lackluster reviews, there wasn’t much hype for Legend of the Sword ahead of its release.
The final nail in the coffin, though, was the competition. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword opened in theaters merely a week after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which targeted a similar audience and already had the weight of a cinematic universe behind it, rather than being burdened with trying to start one. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 grossed $65 million in its second weekend – more than four times Legend of the Sword did in its opening weekend.
By the following week, it was estimated that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword would lose $150 million for Warner Bros., leaving the cinematic universe that would have been attached dead on arrival. With such a disastrous release there was no chance of a sequel, let alone any spinoffs. It’s unfortunate that things played out that way, as spinoff movies focusing solely on characters like Lancelot could have been very interesting. Perhaps the biggest mistake Warner Bros. made was in starting things off with a character that everyone already knows.
Fortunately for fans of the Arthurian legends, a film focusing on one of Arthur’s knights is still on the way this year, in the form of David Lowery’s The Green Knight. It’s unlikely to kick off any cinematic universes, but it will bring one of the strangest tales of the Knights of the Round Table to life.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/king-arthur-wb-shared-universe-plan-failure-explained/
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