EXCLUSIVE: Stuart Hazeldine has been tapped to rewrite Agincourt, which Michael Mann will direct based on the Bernard Cornwell bestseller about an archer who comes of age under Henry V as the king prepares to lead his outnumbered English troops against the French in the Battle Of Agincourt. That epic battle was immortalized by Shakespeare’s Henry V. The protagonist is a young man with a death sentence on his head who is saved when his skills with the bow catch the attention of the king. The archer develops into a warrior and falls in love with a young woman whose virtue he saved from a lecherous priest. He becomes the portal to the bloody battle.
Anyone who has seen Mann’s Last Of The Mohicans can understand my Eddie Haskell-like effusion over the prospect of the director getting back to a major historical battlefield event (“Stay alive, no matter what occurs. I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”) Ok, I’ve regained my composure. Anyway, previous script drafts were done by Michael Hirst and Benjamin Ross, and the film is being developed and produced by Luc Roeg’s Independent and Mann’s Forward Pass. Hazeldine takes the job after scripting Gods And Kings, the Moses biopic at Warner Bros that Steven Spielberg circled. He also scripted the primary draft of Paradise Lost for Legendary Pictures, an ambitious film which got unplugged over a high budget.
Mann is currently in pre-production on an untitled feature film about cyber crime for Legendary Pictures. That picture will star Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis. Mann will direct from a script he co-wrote with Morgan Foehl. Mann has been developing the project for over a year and is scheduled to begin principal photography in June. Hazeldine is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment and Rick Genow. Mann’s repped by CAA.
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