Guy Ritchie wants Charlie Hunnam and Elizabeth Olsen to play King Arthur and some lady
Guy Ritchie has set his sights on Sons Of Anarchy and Pacific Rim star Charlie Hunnam to play King Arthur in his proposed six-film cycle of movies based on the Arthurian legend, a role that could raise the actor to franchise stardom on the back of what promises to be over a dozen hours of stylized, slow-motion sword fights. Variety reports that Hunnam recently read for the role alongside Spartacus actor Jai Courtney and Henry Cavill, who will presumably be too busy defending himself against Batman’s civil lawsuit to commit to anything of this magnitude at the moment.
Warner Bros. has been trying to get a King Arthur movie off the ground for a while—Ritchie was originally going to direct a mere one film on the subject from a script by Trainspotting scribe John Hodge, while a project called Arthur And Lancelot (starring Game Of Thrones’ Kit Harrington as Arthur) was deemed too expensive. For better or worse, this one seems like it’s moving forward.
Idris Elba was recently in talks to play a character who may or may not be Merlin, while Elizabeth Olsen is reportedly Ritchie’s top choice to play the “female lead”—a character who could be Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, or, who knows, a lady version of Galahad named “Gilda.” As Variety points out, the plot details for the movies are still under wraps, insofar as it’s possible to keep secret plot details of a story first written about as early as the 6th century.