Trivia / King Arthur (2004)

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Ray Winstone had boxed in his youth, so boxing was incorporated into Bors's character.
  • Keira Knightley created a backstory for Guinevere that she was leading an attack when she was captured, and had likely been tortured in prison too.
• All-Star Cast: Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Keira Knightley, Mads Mikkelsen, Stellan Skarsgård, Ray Winstone, Ray Stevenson and Hugh Dancy.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Keira Knightley signed on as soon as she was told she'd get to sword fight.
• Box Office Bomb: King Arthur failed to make up its $120 million budget in North America, only gaining just under $52 million. It fared considerably better worldwide, though.
• California Doubling: Shot in Ireland.
• Creator Backlash: Keira Knightley was very unhappy that posters of the film had photoshopped her breasts to be larger.
• Creator Killer: This movie was one of several 2004 bombs that mixed together with Roy E. Disney's second Save Disney campaign and general turmoil at the Walt Disney Company to bring CEO Michael Eisner's 21-year long reign to an end. Eisner was forced out the year after this film's release in order to allow president Bob Iger to keep Pixar when they threatened to jump ship.
• Deleted Role:
  • Owen Teale's role as Pelagrius was deleted in the theatrical cut, where he's just The Ghost, but he appears in the extended version.
  • Horton had a bigger part in the original film but most of his scenes ended up trimmed or cut, and he abruptly disappears from the film.
• Dueling Movies: Came out within a year of three other historical battle epics that were following-up on the success of Gladiator. Its competitors being Troy, Alexander, and Kingdom of Heaven.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Ioan Gruffud had to grow a beard for his role as Lancelot. But as the beard came out reddish, he had to have it painted black every day.
  • Keira Knightley also had to gain muscle for the role, and went up a dress size. She also did three months of boxing, weight lifting, sword fighting and horse riding.
• Executive Meddling: The film was originally envisioned and shot as an R-rated film with corresponding graphic violence. However, after the picture had been edited, Disney executives demanded it be changed to a PG-13, hence necessitating a lot of effects work to remove the blood from the battle scenes. Antoine Fuqua and Jerry Bruckheimer were not at all pleased with this decision and fought against it, but were ultimately overruled. They were both disappointed with the theatrical release and later released a much more violent Director's Cut on DVD. However, according to Fuqua's commentary track, even the Director's Cut version is considerably less violent than his ideal version. Ironically, when the film was released, one of the biggest criticisms was that the battles were mysteriously bloodless, hence undermining any sense of realism.
• Fake Brit:
  • Irish Pat Kinevane as Horton.
  • Australian Joel Edgerton as Gawain and Danish Mads Mikkelsen as Tristan.
  • Downplayed by the Welsh Ioan Gruffudd, who puts on an English accent to play Lancelot.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Stellan Skarsgård (Sweden) plays Cerdic the leader of the Saxon invaders who were originally from Germany.
  • Mads Mikkelsen (Denmark), Ioan Gruffudd, Ray Winstone, Hugh Dancy, Ray Stevenson (United Kingdom) and Joel Edgerton (Australia) play British established Sarmatians, a group of Iranian people that lived in Eastern Europe.
  • Ken Stott (United Kingdom) as the Roman Marius Honorius.
• Follow the Leader: Made after Gladiator made Sword and Sandal films big again and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy popularized Medieval European Fantasy-style films. The film, set in 467 AD, straddles the two genres since it take place just a few years before the fall of Rome in 476 AD, which is usually considered the beginning of the Middle Ages. The connections with the first of those films extends to them even sharing a writer and the same composer.
• Friendship on the Set: Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy became friends, and continued to meet regularly after the film was done whenever the former was in London. Their on-screen chemistry was a big factor in how they both ended up cast in Hannibal.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd being in a historical-style King Arthur movie looks like a natural fit on paper given the legend's links to Wales, yet he's not playing a proto-Welsh i.e. Celtic Briton character due to the contentious "Sarmatian connection" angle the movie takes, and so his character Lancelot is here from Eastern Europe like the rest of the knights. On another level of irony, Lancelot was most probably not part of the original Welsh-y stage of the legends to begin with, being said in the Arthurian romances to be from France.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Ray Stevenson had a crew cut when he auditioned for the film, as he was playing a cardinal on the West End at the time, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Antoine Fuqua liked it, so they had him keep it.
• Throw It In!: Producers worried that there wasn't enough humor in the film, so they added the scene where Bors reveals that his bastard children have numbers instead of names.
• Uncredited Role: John Lee Hancock did an uncredited rewrite.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Ray Winstone took the role partly because it was an excuse to have a four-month stay in Ireland, admitting he had to get out of Dublin because he was having too much fun drinking.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson were originally approached for the role of King Arthur before Clive Owen was cast. Daniel Craig was also considered for King Arthur before the casting of Owen, but was turned down on the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer thought that Owen would be the next James Bond, which would greatly increase the film's commercial shelf-life on home release.
  • Michael Bay was initially chosen to direct the movie before Antoine Fuqua was hired. However, Bay dropped out of the project due to budget concerns despite developing the film for nearly five years.
  • The original ending of the film was replaced after test audiences thought it was too depressing. Instead of Arthur and Guinevere getting married and the knights who died getting reincarnated as horses, it shows the graves of the knights and a boy trying to pull out the sword from one's grave like Arthur once did. Arthur tells him that his time will come.
  • In David Franzoni's original script, the love triangle so central to the original myth between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot was a major part of the plot, as it is in most filmic adaptations of the Arthurian legend. However, during his research for the film, Fuqua came to believe that there was no truth to the love triangle aspect of the story and had Franzoni rewrite the script without it.
  • Guinevere was going to wear armour for the final battle, but then they realised she would be unlikely to have acquired any, and so then they decided on the leather costume instead.

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