Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. has attached The Last Samurai helmer, Ed Zwick, to direct their period epic The Lions of Al-Rassan, an adaptation of a Guy Gavriel Kay novel about the collision of religions in Spain during the Middle Ages that melds fact and fantasy.
Vera Blasi is set to pen the script based on the historical fantasy novel set at the beginning of the Christian re-conquest of Moorish Spain. A triangle forms between two warrior princes and a female doctor in the fictional locale of Al-Rassan. There are allusions to the Crusades-era religious clashes between Jewish, Catholic and Muslim factions.
Commenting on the opportunity Zwick told Variety, “He has done something remarkable in imagining a very compelling world, which has some basis in history, and yet departs in a way that adds a kind of magical realism… That is a blend I’ve never seen before and feels like a different way to approach an epic story.”
