Home Entertainment Fox thinking about re-imagining King Arthur in a police procedural CAMELOT

Fox thinking about re-imagining King Arthur in a police procedural CAMELOT

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No, this isn’t a September Fool’s Day joke. Firstly because Fool’s Day is the first of April whereas today is (nominally) the first day of spring, and secondly because this is a real thing: Fox is considering re-imagining the legends of King Arthur as a modern day police procedural set in New York, tentatively titled Camelot.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “wow this sounds bad!” – but wait, it gets worse. As per The Hollywood Reporter, the premise of the show is as follows:

When an ancient magic reawakens in modern-day Manhattan, a graffiti artist named Art must team with his best friend Lance and his ex, Gwen — an idealistic cop — in order to realize his destiny and fight back against the evil forces that threaten the city.

What? If you’re anything like me that word is followed by “the f*ck?!” and then a face palm and a long slow sigh.

Let’s make a few more guesses about the (potential) series: Merlin will be a wise old homeless person, Mordred is a hedge fund manager and Morgan le Fay another ex-girlfriend. At some point he will use his paint can as a flamethrower. Excalibur will be disguised as his mobile phone, and he probably picks it up out of some newly-laid cement. The round table will be the social media platform where he and his eclectic group of friends congregate, and laughing refer to themselves as “knights”. Kill me now.

I’m usually not negative about potential series or movies because you only really know what you’re getting once you’ve seen it. What you see could surprise you and I’m willing to judge them on their own merits and not based on any prior knowledge – the old wait-and-see is my approach. That’s how I felt about CBS’ (now shelved) plans to create a modern day police procedural based on Nancy Drew, another character that I grew up reading much like the tales about King Arthur. But this? I really don’t know about this idea.

What’s also not helping me is the creators, Dan Frey and Ru Sommer, have hardly any completed projects to their names. Although to be fair they do have a movie currently in development, Bleeding Kansas, for which they won the Gold Prize for Best Historical Film Script at the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards in 2011. Which says to me they definitely have potential, but the above concept is very different from a historical drama about the conflict between anti- and pro-slavery advocates in Kansas prior to the outbreak of the US Civil War. 

Fox also haven’t greenlit the series as yet, they’ve just issued a script plus penalty commitment for the project, so this may not see the light of day.

What do you think?

Last Updated: September 2, 2016

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