Netflix Passed on ‘A Knight’s Tale’ Sequel Over Concept

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read
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Netflix briefly jousted with the idea for a “A Knight’s Tale” sequel, but ultimately passed due to the concept.

Director Brian Helgeland told Inverse that following the release of the 2001 film starring late actor Heath Ledger, a sequel was shopped to studio Sony and then Netflix. The first concept was a “meh” for Sony — the second made it to the desks of Netflix. The streamer walked away after it decided the concept for “A Knight’s Tale 2” would “not be successful” among its audience, Helgeland said.

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The first:

“When we finished ‘A Knight’s Tale,’ we were already thinking about making the sequel as a pirate film,” Helgeland said. “The plot revolved around Count Adhemar kidnapping Jocelyn and taking her to Constantinople. They end up as galley slaves after their boat is captured by pirates. There’s a prisoner on the boat who has a treasure map tattooed on his back, but he keeps getting flogged for indiscipline. The guys volunteer to take turns getting flogged in this prisoner’s place, so the map isn’t erased. Sony didn’t want to do it.”

The other plot for a potential sequel was centered around Ledger’s character William’s offspring instead:

“There was another idea pitched to me that was all about William’s daughter,” Helgeland said. “Paul Bettany called me after he had dinner with Alan Tudyk, and the guys had an idea that William had passed away during a war. However, William has a teenage daughter who wants to joust, but she’s not allowed to because she’s a woman. She tracks down the gang and they agree to teach her how to joust, but she has to hide who she is. They cut her hair short and she speaks with a deep voice, et cetera.”

Helgeland added, “I pitched it to Sony because they own the rights, and it seemed like they were interested in making it with Netflix, releasing it as a Netflix movie. My understanding is that Netflix tested this sequel idea through their algorithms, which indicated that it would not be successful.”

Netflix’s infamous algorithm is actually what personalizes someone’s Netflix suggestions to them. To the best of our knowledge, there is no magic software Netflix runs potential films through for compatibility with its audience.

Netflix did not respond to our request for comment on this story.

Either way it’s a bummer, because as Helgeland says, “‘A Knight’s Tale’ seems to get more popular with every passing year; it’s the strangest thing.”

“A Knight’s Tale” TV series was also in the works circa 2012 at ABC, but it was not picked up.

The “A Knight’s Tale” sequel isn’t the only Helgeland project Netflix has passed on. The writer/director has a shelved “Button Man” script at the platform — it was too similar to a pair of other projects, he said.

“I wrote ‘Button Man,’ but it’s not being made at the moment. Netflix had ‘The Gray Man’ and ‘The Killer’ being released in a relatively close window, so they decided not to make all three at once because they’re kind of similar,” Helgeland said. “It’s still there for them to make if they want.”

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