The goal for 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was not just, as is the case with any movie, was for it to be well-received by the public, but to also spawn a new Warner Bros franchise. However, the Guy Ritchie movie ended up being a critical and commercial flop, resulting in those sequel plans being scrapped. Almost three full years later, Charlie Hunnam, who starred as King Arthur, says he’s interested in redoing Legend of the Sword due to how so many things went wrong when making it. He explained:
I’d like to go back to King Arthur because there’s a lot of things went wrong during that and a lot of things that were out of our control. I just don’t think we ended up matching the aspiration — we just didn’t quite make the movie we wanted. The idea was that if it was a success, we would’ve made several of those films, and I’m really captivated by the Arthurian legends and I just feel like we really missed an opportunity to tell a long-form story.
Charlie Hunnam addressed his time on King Arthur: Legend of the Sword while plugging his latest movie, The Gentleman, alongside costars Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey on Sirius XM Radio Andy. Granted, the chances of Hunnam’s request being fulfilled are extremely slim, because even if Warner Bros decides one day to go back into the Arthurian well, it’ll likely start from scratch with a brand-new cast. You know, the traditional reboot approach.
Still, should King Arthur: Legend of the Sword ever get the redo that Charlie Hunnam would like, the actor is confident that things would work better the second time around, namely because of one specific element. When Andy Cohen inquired about if there was “one thing” that went wrong, Hunnam answered:
There was a piece of miscasting that ended up crippling the central story line. It’s actually not in the film anymore.
I can only imagine how frustrating that is. It’s one thing if there’s an aspect of a movie that ends up messing with the entire product, but it’s still kept in. But for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword to, as Charlie Hunnam sees it, miscast someone, removed said individual and then the storyline still ends up being negatively affected is even worse.
Charlie Hunnam didn’t identity who he was referring to with this “miscasting,” and representatives for the actor, Warner Bros and Guy Ritchie did not respond to Entertainment Weekly’s request for comment. In any case, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about King Arthur: Legend of the Sword going through significant cuts, as director Guy Ritchie acknowledged that at one point that movie clocked in at over three hours, but it ended up being just a little over two hours. So yeah, quite a bit of material was removed by the time the final edit was complete, including the opening scene being drastically shortened.
Ultimately, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was met with mostly negative reviews, ranking at 31% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It also only made $148.7 million worldwide off a budget of around $175 million, resulting in Warner Bros and Village Roadshow Pictures reportedly losing approximately $150 million. So it’s not surprising whatsoever that Legend of the Sword didn’t launch a franchise, but if Charlie Hunnam had his way, he’d go back and give it another shot to ensure that the Arthurian legend was properly depicted.
You can see Charlie Hunnam back on the big screen when The Gentleman is released on January 24. Don’t forget to look through our 2020 release schedule to plan your visits to the theater this year accordingly.
