Aug 21 2009Bryan Singer to Re-Document Europe's Greatest Sword

Bryan Singer, the man working a confusing reimagining of Battlestar Galactica that disregards Sci Fi's already-reimagined Battlestar Galactica, has announced his intentions for further remaking:

Warner Bros. and Bryan Singer are unsheathing "Excalibur," redoing the 1981 John Boorman movie about King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.

The project is still in the early stages, with Warners only tying up the remake rights, which it shares with Boorman. Singer's involvement is still in the talking stage and Legendary Pictures may come aboard the project.

The 1981 movie starred Nigel Terry as Arthur and Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere and featured early performances from Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne. The movie told the well-known myth, in a gritty and dramatic fashion, of the young man who draws the sword Excalibur from a stone, is mentored by Merlin, establishes Camelot, loses his wife, Guenevere, to his best friend, Lancelot, and engages in the quest for the Holy Grail.

Now, I don't understand legal mumbo jumbo (I understand it so little that when I say "legal mumbo jumbo," I shake my hands around and kind of make a goofy face, to show how little I understand it), but it seems weird that you'd need the rights to remake Excalibur. Isn't the plot straight-up Arthurian legend? I'm pretty sure you could remake Excalibur and just not tell anyone you've remade Excalibur and, unless you used the exact same script, probably no one would call it out. And if someone did, just say, "Actually, no, this is not a rip-off of Excalibur; my film is influenced by the '90s animated series King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, only I took out the part where Arthur and his knights were all high school football players from the future."