Two of historical fiction’s greatest characters may have found their actors in David Dobkin’s ARTHUR & LANCELOT. The current buzz surrounds young TV stars Kit Harington and Joel Kinnaman, respectively of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES and AMC’s THE KILLING. Though their profiles are not currently enormous, they each have a respectable TV hit to their name, and with each of their shows returning for a second season, each actor’s status is likely on the rise.
It is not yet known who will play which role, but the pair has been recently screen testing, presumably to ensure that they work together as the mythical team. As the front runners, they have likely beaten out a bevy of slightly bigger name actors, like Dominic Cooper and Jim Sturgess. Though Harington’s swordplay credentials in GAME OF THRONES may seem like an advantage, apparently Dobkin is planning a contemporary reinvention of the old legend, an approach that has had historically mixed results at best.
Dobkin is mostly known for light hearted comic fare, his most recent film being THE CHANGE UP, another instalment in the body swap pantheon. He seems to have somewhat more high brow aims for this piece, though – ‘the whole thing is wrapped around the birth of democracy as a concept and it’s positing Arthur as the first man to say all men are created equal’. The film’s $90 million budget suggests that there will be a healthy dose of action, though, to subvert Dobkin’s heady rumination on democracy and so forth.
