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Summer Movies 2004

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A behind-the-scenes look at ''King Arthur'' | 175714__king2_l
CAVALLI IN CAMELOT? Knightley's period costume was adjusted to highlight her rock-hard abs
King Arthur: Jonathan Hession

Dusty textbook stuff? Not to Franzoni. ''Take away the myth,'' he says, ''and you get King Arthur as 'The Wild Bunch.''' Jerry Bruckheimer agreed. After hearing the pitch in 2000, the Armageddon producer bought it -- even though Franzoni hadn't written a word. Bruckheimer immediately began searching for directors, including one of his favorites, ''Pearl Harbor'''s Michael Bay. But after a long flirtation, Bay passed to concentrate on Bruckheimer's ''Bad Boys II.'' There also may have been philosophical differences. ''He was very interested in the myth version of King Arthur,'' says Franzoni.

Finally, in early 2003, after further script development (''The Alamo'''s John Lee Hancock pitched in with a rewrite), Bruckheimer turned to Fuqua, who was coming off a tumultuous experience working with Bruce Willis on ''Tears of the Sun.'' ''I didn't have a lot of trust after something like that,'' says Fuqua, 38, who had battled with Willis over creative and on-set control of the film. ''Never again will I let that happen. I will walk away first.'' He had every reason to believe ''Arthur'' could be different. Bruckheimer had given him one of his earliest breaks -- directing the video for Coolio's ''Gangsta's Paradise'' from the soundtrack of the producer's 1995 hit ''Dangerous Minds'' -- and the two had remained close. Fuqua clicked with Franzoni's script; he saw it as a latter-day version of ''The Magnificent Seven'' or ''Seven Samurai,'' two of his favorite films. Like Bruckheimer and Franzoni, he imagined something savage, political, and absolutely unmagical. Their realism even extended to casting. ''We didn't want American stars with British accents,'' says the director. ''Too fake. Too hard.'' Clive Owen -- perhaps best known in America for ''Croupier,'' for BMW commercials, and for being constantly rumored as the successor to Pierce Brosnan's James Bond -- was quickly tapped for Arthur. (For the record, here's Owen on Bond: ''I've never been approached, and frankly, I think it's really unfair to Pierce that journalists keep bringing this up.'') Casting Lancelot took longer, and when Bruckheimer finally found his man -- Ioan Gruffudd, star of A&E's critically lauded ''Horatio Hornblower'' series -- the actor was committed to the CBS flop-in-the-making ''Century City.'' ''Fortunately, I have a relationship with CBS,'' says a smiling Bruckheimer, who produces the CSI franchise for the network. Arrangements were made, and Gruffudd was dubbed Arthur's best knight. (And yes, says Gruffudd, ''the first thing people usually ask me is how to pronounce my name.'' The Welsh handle is pronounced Yo-ahn Griffith.)

As for Guinevere, Knightley had pursued the role ever since Bruckheimer told her about it while filming ''Pirates of the Caribbean.'' The 19-year-old starlet particularly liked Franzoni's revisionist take on Camelot's future queen; in ''King Arthur,'' she's a fierce freedom fighter not above using sex as a weapon. ''My take on it was, if she has to screw Lancelot to get her way, that's what she'll do, and if she has to screw Arthur to get her way, that's what she'll do,'' says Knightley. ''She's very political. Very calculating. She's a bitch, really.''

In other words, Guinevere isn't unlike a motley Sarmatian knight herself. Knightley certainly trained like one, joining Owen and the other actor/knights for three months of archery, horseback, and sword-fighting lessons prior. Knightley developed such rock-hard abs that Bruckheimer had her Pict fighting togs designed to showcase them. Naturally, the men weren't equally exploited. They were oppressed. ''Heavy, heavy, heavy,'' says Owen of his armor, which proved even more cumbersome while riding horses and being blasted by massive wind machines. ''Antoine was obsessed with wind machines,'' says Owen. ''He was also obsessive about never getting to a stage where two guys were at a dead stop on a horse having a chat. Visually, he's right. But when you're putting them straight into the face of huge wind machines, and talking loud enough to be heard over the machines -- well, that's not easy [for actors].''


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