Exam writer/director Stuart Hazeldine is no stranger to writing for big projects and big name directors. His next gig looks to follow that trend, as no less a filmmaker than Michael Mann has Hazeldine toiling on a new draft of **Agincourt.
Based on Sharpe creator Bernard Cornwell’s 2008 novel Azincourt, the film will follow a young man who sees the opportunity for a second chance. Our hero is Nicholas Hook, an archer who comes of age under Henry V as the king prepares to lead his outnumbered English troops against the French at the Battle Of Agincourt, as immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry V. Hook has a death sentence on his head, but is saved when his skills with the bow catch the attention of the king. The archer develops into a warrior and falls in love with a young woman whose virtue he saved from a lecherous priest.
Mann isn’t the first person to pick up the book as a possible movie: Tudors creator Michael Hirst tried adapting it back in 2009, though nothing has since come of that effort. With the** Last Of The Mohicans** director and the man who brought us Exam aboard, there’s hope it could work out this time. Yet no matter how quickly drafts are created, it’ll still have to wait (along with other possible projects) for Mann to finish up the cyber crime thriller he’s preparing with Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis attached.
Hazeldine, meanwhile, has worked on scripts for such huge, embryonic productions as Moses saga Gods And Kings (which Steven Spielberg was considering for a long time) and Biblical battle tale Paradise Lost, with Alex Proyas all set to direct until budgetary issues shut it down. Though we’re glad to see him getting another high-profile writing assignment, we’re still hoping to see another directorial effort from Hazeldine sooner rather than later. In the meantime, if anyone needs us we'll be over here reciting the St Crispin's Day speech. We few, we happy few...