Chris Morris once played a prank on Piers Morgan, where he rang him up pretending to be Bono, and told him that U2 were splitting up; that their final album would be called Schwanz; and that their farewell gig would be at Alton Towers, supported by NWA. Morgan printed the lot in The Sun. We mention this so that if this story turns out to be untrue, we can say, ha, we knew it, it was so daft! But, despite n'ary a mention of it in Empire's webchat, even when asked about immediate future projects, Dolph Lundgren does seem to be starring in In the Name of the King 2, to be directed by Uwe Boll.
The original, based on the Dungeon Siege videogame franchise, starred Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds, and is the worst thing on any of their CVs, which is saying something. An "epic" fantasy with its eye on Lord of the Rings, it runs to a loooooong two hours on DVD, and an incredible three on blu-ray. Has anyone seen the three-hour cut? Tell us how you survived below.
Boll somehow raised $60m for the first film's budget, but said later that he would never work on such a large scale again, which bodes well for part 2's production values. As for the plot, we can't possibly explain it better than Boll himself:
"It's like contemporary, right now, big city, and we have Dolph Lundgren basically being a cop... and one night he gets attacked by ninjas in his house and fell with the ninjas into a vortex back in time. And then it turns out it's fifty years after In the Name of the King ended, and [fantasy land] Ehb is destroyed and Jason Statham and everybody who was in the first part got wiped out... And Dolph is the son of Jason Statham, and he was sent into the future and brought up in an orphanage, because the parents felt they would all die. So he is basically the last survivor of the kingdom of Ehb, so he should bring the kingdom back in charge."
Lest you think Dolph's involvement is wishful thinking on Boll's part, Screenjunkies got confirmation from the man himself. "That's right," he told them, "I play a war veteran who gets pulled into some sort of medieval power struggle and kind of gets redemption for all his pains."
"It's just a role I wanted to play," he explains. "It's fun to exercise my acting chops one in a while. I've got to get ready for Expendables 2. Someone told me Boll is the evil genius of directing or something. I guess we'll see..."
We will indeed. Run, Dolph. Run away!