Three films planned about the battle of Hastings

London, Dec 22: Three Hollywood films about the battle of Hastings may soon hit cinema halls. According to reports, filmmakers are planning to give a cinema treatment to the clash between King Harold and William the Conqueror as the falling out of two comrades.

It’s been about 1,000 years after Harold took an arrow in the eye, one of the most dramatic turning points in English history. Films about the historic event are expected to involve a combination of violence and contrasting love lives of Harold and William. While other key battles—like Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Spanish Armada and countless fights from the two world wars—have already received cinema treatments, Hastings has remained ignored to date. “It has everything — a big-scale event, a turning point in European history and great human stories,” Times Online quoted Tom Holland, the historian and author of Millennium, as saying. The three films are expected to highlight the friendship of two “buddies”, Harold’s aid for William in battles against the Bretons, and their fall out that brought them to blows at Hastings shortly afterwards. The companies planning the films include veterans of Hollywood historical epics as well as the producer of ER, the American television medical drama. “It’s (about) the friendship and trust between two men who then became great rivals,” said Michael Kuhn, of the British company Qwerty Films — producer of The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley — which is working on one of the versions. William Nicholson, who wrote the script for last year’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age, will be the screenwriter on the second version of the film. “In Hollywood terms it is a ‘buddy’ movie about two men which ended in tears,” he said. He, however, added: “I don’t see this primarily as a battle movie.” He is writing his Hastings script for the newly formed film production arm of Shine, a television company whose hits include Spooks and Merlin. The third film has a working title of William the Conqueror, and a budget of 67million pounds. It will be jointly produced for Killer Films by Pamela Koffler, who made the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, and John Wells, who made ER. “I know a lot of people in the US might not have heard of William and 1066, but he was a dynamic and charismatic figure while the battle was a defining moment in history,” Koffler said. ANI