On Aug 31st The Daily Wire reported on an Instagram post Boreing made of the literal ground-breaking of their set in Hungary, a village meant to invoke Roman-occupied England, a land called Britannia, at the time. It was not yet Great Britain, but the legendary King Arthur, who was purported to actually be a warlord who helped unite the remaining tribes against viking invaders, after Rome fell, was meant to take on an even greater mantle of heroic questing. The Arthur of legend did far greater than this, and his story was also one of the most bitter sweet. It contained many iterations and varieties, and Stephen R Lawhead’s is one of these modern versions.
Many theories about who Arthur was were influenced by history. But the beauty of mythical England is that it has been retold in effort to get closer to what England means, as opposed to just a retelling to pay lip service. Similarly to the great legendarium of Saints in the Catholic Church, it is not necessarily a simple historical account, but it’s the mythical and social impact that these stories have on the reader that matters. It’s true that often deeds of bravery were enough to draw a cult following. But myth goes beyond this mere telling.
Obviously this story of Arthur doesn’t reach to biblical heights of impact, which is both historical as well as mythical, but it is powerful in that it contains within it the identity of many a king, lady, and English member of Parliament, who seek to embody English values to those who follow and admire them. This represents more than a thousand years of English and Welsh mythology.
But Lawhead does something new here while still encapsulating the old within it. Incorporating Atlantis, and other fantasy elements, along with the powerful mythical symbology of the more traditional Arthur, this could end up being the next Game of Thrones, but without the terrible show runners they had, failing to adapt the fairly predictable George RR Martin, in his well-worn style of titillating hero-hatred.
So who do we have to adapt and direct this series? We have the exuberant Boreing, as a childhood fan of Lawhead, and we have Ryan Whitaker, director of Surprised by Oxford. Here is his website. Ryan had mostly been doing shorts and small projects before this, as well as a short stint as a Story Producer on the recent The Jesus Music movie. But “Surprised” was his first major outing as a feature director, which got him noticed by Boreing. Being that they are both from Nashville, this likely made the partnership more sweet. If you haven’t seen Surprised by Oxford, there will be a mention on how you can see it, down below.
That’s right, Boreing got a chance to see “Surprised” (or at least the BTS), and no doubt struck up a deal after that. A director’s gig might even be better than buying the film.
But what does this mean for the adaptation of Lawhead’s work, purchased by The Daily Wire less than a year ago, in November of 2022? Will it be honored as Tolkien was honored by Peter Jackson, as opposed to how Jeff Bezos raped his memory? Will it be honored the way Andrew Adamson honored the Chronicles of Narnia, or will it undoubtably be cursed & spit upon by Greta Gerwig once she gets to have her way with Aslan?
And what about the production value? Hungary has crews able to pull this off, as filming location for much of Netflix’s The Witcher series, and Marvel’s Moon Knight, I think they got this covered. Especially when you consider the kind of filming they will be doing… fantasy action, you can see that special demands will be on this crew. However, neither Boreing, nor Whitaker appear to have action directing experience, but if they can find an experienced 2nd unit director in Europe to help them with this (often highly) technical work (or to get help from Dallas Sonnier’s little black book of action directors) they might have a distinct possibility of pulling this off.
Action you say? Yes. In fact, that is the major update. Yesterday, a tweet by Boreing gave me hope that maybe DW will be giving us more production updates on their films after all. Of course, these aren’t the most informative updates, only being social media tweets and posts. But, it’s better than nothing. I’ll take it.
Here was Boreing, marking Sept 6th as the first day of production.
Then just yesterday, Jeremy marks this as their first action sequence.
It looks like they are having fun and things are progressing nicely!
So, what you ask might have impressed Jeremy Boreing so much that he hired Whitaker to co-direct with him? I don’t know what it was about Surprised by Oxford, as I have never seen it, but maybe we will all get a chance to see it soon.
Surprised by Oxford will be getting a brief theatrical run on September 27th, only in select theaters. I think there will be some references to CS Lewis happening here. If you haven’t got the reference yet, raise your hand!
Here is the trailer for Surprised by Oxford.
Looks like some surprise performances and great cinematography happening here. Hopefully the lack of action experience on the director’s part can be mitigated here, and we can get some GoT action without the smut. So grateful for updates from Jeremy & Ryan!
If you are interested in tickets to see Surprised by Oxford you can go to surprisedbyoxford.movie. If you want to see The Pendragon Cycle, well- me too. We will all be waiting, but hopefully it will come out on the DW+ platform, as well as maybe a special screening somewhere. We will see!
Did you enjoy this article? Are you looking forward to both The Pendragon Cycle and Surprised by Oxford, coming up on Sept 27th? Let us know on our social medias, or comment down below (with subscription).
