Peter O’Toole played King Henry II twice, first in Becket (1964), opposite Richard Burton as the title character, and then in The Lion in Winter (1968), opposite Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine — and he was nominated for an Oscar both times.
I saw the latter film many years ago, and I have never seen the former film — but I am thinking that I should make time for it soon, after reading this Hollywood Reporter story (via Reuters):
The Weinstein Co. has hired Scottish director Paul McGuigan, the filmmaker behind the crime thriller “Lucky Number Slevin,” to take the helm of an upcoming medieval drama titled “Four Knights.”
Set in 12th-century England, the film follows a quartet of foul-mouthed knights sent by King Henry II to negotiate the peace with the troublesome but hugely popular Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett.
The knights’ mission goes awry when they end up murdering Beckett and are forced to flee to a remote castle with the whole country baying for their blood.
The loosely historical adaptation is based on the play “Four Knights in Knaresboro,” written by Paul Webb, who was commissioned to pen the screenplay for the Weinstein Co.
FWIW, McGuigan has been down the medieval path before, having directed The Reckoning (2003), a murder mystery adapted a wee bit too loosely from Barry Unsworth’s Morality Play; and he has definitely been down the foul-mouthed road before, having directed the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s The Acid House (1998) — in which the Scottish accent, dialect and graphic slang were so thick that the version I saw had English subtitles!
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