CONQUEST!

Well, I’m back, sort of! Spurred on by the recently released trailer for King and Conqueror, a miniseries chronicling the Battle of Hastings and the lead up thereto (as well as the brilliant series The Rest is History podcast pulled together on it recently, elements of which I would have shamelessly pillaged, with the shameless gusto of Harald Hardrada himself, had it been available at the time), I feel that this is the moment, after more than twenty years, to share my own attempt at bringing this epic tale to the big screen. 

My screenplay was written in the spring/summer of 2003, the thought having suddenly popped into my head when stacking shelves in Waitrose’s wine department that the story had never been brought to the big screen. I was doubtless influenced by the revival of big thunderous epics that was starting at the time (Gladiator and the first 2 LOTR films had already been released and I knew that Troy and Oliver Stone’s Alexander were in the pipeline, and had no way of knowing at the time that they would be a bit pants). I was also influenced a bit by Waterloo with Rod Steiger/Christopher Plummer.

I was 19 at the time, so please make allowances. I would write it very differently today (although my pro Saxon bias would very much remain intact). However, I think elements of it hold up reasonably well. Sadly my Waitrose salary did not quite yield me the $100m budget I would have needed to make my vision a reality (I still have over 40 years to pull together a budget to bring it to the screen for the 1000th anniversary in 2066 though, so hope is not lost!) I did make a half-hearted attention for drum up attention from various bigwigs in the world of film at the time. The only one who responded was Sir Ken (Chuckles) Branagh, from whom I still have a letter in which he gently declined the project on the basis that “1066 is not my era - the ghost of Monty Python always hangs over such things for me” (as if this was a bad thing!)

I seem to recall that my casting wishlist when I originally wrote it included Sean Bean as Harold (it would have added another death scene to his eclectic roster), Rufus Sewell as William, Brian Blessed as Hardrada and Judi Dench as Harold’s mother Gytha. All of whom are now far too old but would have been absolutely marvellous at the time!

Anyway, a link to the entire thing is below for anyone who might be interested! 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQMW_v8Bu8jtxoC3shXqHcBncKSLTR9i/view?usp=share_link