What Happened to Ridley Scott’s Disney Movie Epic?

Scan the filmography of Ridley Scott and you’ll see he’s not a filmmaker bound by expectations or one genre. Historical epics, perhaps informed by his feature-length directorial debut The Duelists, are a fixture of his filmography, sure; however, he has everything from the war movie Black Hawk Down to the crime caper Matchstick Men to the heightened fantasy movie Legend in his body of work. At this point, it shouldn’t be shocking to see Scott engaging in any genre or strain of cinema – yet, there was still something shocking about a project Scott signed onto back in 2018.

That production was a feature-film adaptation of the book The Merlin Saga. This would’ve been a fantasy project (returning Scott to Legend’s genre) adapted from a series of books that explore the life and times of Merlin. The catch? This proposed project would’ve brought Scott to Disney, which had the film rights to The Merlin Saga. For one brief moment in the late 2010s, the paths of Walt Disney Pictures and Ridley Scott almost crossed.

The Earliest Days of Ridley Scott’s Merlin Saga

Scott’s involvement in The Merlin Saga was reported in January 2018, just a few weeks after this director’s All the Money in the World had hit theaters. Scott had delivered two separate features (World and Alien: Covenant) to multiplexes everywhere throughout 2017. Even with that draining achievement under his belt, Scott was eager to keep going. Variety reported that Scott was deep into discussions with Disney on not only helming The Merlin Saga, but that he was also intent on making it his very next movie. Scott had several movies that he was attached to at this point, but The Merlin Saga seemed to be trumping them all in importance.

This would’ve mark his first movie for Walt Disney Pictures, but not his first film for the Disney corporation. Two of his 1990s movies, White Squall and G.I. Jane, were distributed by Hollywood Pictures. Though Scott was no stranger to the halls of the Mouse House, him helming a straightforward fantasy film for the Walt Disney Pictures brand was an unexpected move.

This Variety news piece points out a strange detail about Disney pursuing a Merlin Saga film adaptation at this point in time. In the late 2010s, Disney was also trying to get a live-action remake of The Sword in the Stone going as part of its dedication to remaking nearly all of its animated classics. Variety reported that Scott talked with Disney about helming this new Sword in the Stone, but opted for The Merlin Saga for undisclosed reasons. In hindsight, it’s quite odd Disney was simultaneously developing two blockbuster movies centered on King Arthur lore. The fact that Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword just became a legendary box office bomb for Warner Bros. the previous year made the simultaneous existence of these two projects extra confounding.

Still, Disney and Scott seemed to be moving straight on into the world of The Merlin Saga. No further news emerged on the project in 2018, but in early 2019, a rumor spread that casting was underway for the blockbuster and that it would start shooting at the end of the year. However, in July 2019, Scott radically shifted gears and instead focused on another medieval title, The Last Duel. Ironically, thanks to the 20th Century Studios/Disney merger (Last Duel financier has a distribution agreement with the former label), this title did return Scott to Disney after all!

Why Did Ridley Scott Abandon The Merlin Saga?

Scott’s only public retrospective comment on The Merlin Saga came in a 2022 The Hollywood Reporter interview where he recalled that Disney “wanted me to do a wizard film, and I don’t do wizard films. It wasn’t a good idea.” This curt anecdote suggests Scott may have not been as deeply committed to the project as the original rumors indicated. Perhaps there was a reason there was near radio silence on Scott’s Merlin Saga between that Variety news piece and the announcement of The Last Duel.

In late 2021, Disney announced a new helmer for The Merlin Saga in the form of Love and Monsters director Michael Matthews. Over three years after that development, there’s been no further momentum on this project. Like that proposed Sword in the Stone live-action remake, The Merlin Saga looks poised to remain unmade. For a brief moment, though, this book adaptation not only looked like it’d exist but that it would bring the Gladiator II helmer of all people into the Walt Disney Pictures fray.

Gladiator II is now in theaters.