Back in June of 2008, we discovered that a new movie was being developed based on the 1844 Alexandre Dumas classic, The Three Musketeers. At the time, not too much was known about the project, and as you can tell, it has been a while since any updates have been offered.

Now, with the title set up and cozy at Warner Brothers, it looks like things are about to set sail. The studio has Producer Lionel Wigram in place, and Peter Straughan has been hired to write the screenplay.

Wigram has done a lot of work with Warner Bros. over the years; he’s had a big hand in the success of the Harry Potter franchise, and was a producer on both Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. He was also a writer and producer on Guy Ritchie’s new take on Sherlock Holmes, which is crucial because that’s exactly where they want to go with this new Three Musketeers adventure. The hopes and plans are to make it fun and exciting to appeal to younger audiences, and to hopefully score another big franchise out of it.

Straughan isn’t the most recognizable name in writing, but he penned the recent films How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and The Men Who Stare at Goats.

No major story details are known at the moment, but the ‘line will follow the same paths that the original did. The original’s main character is actually D’Artagnan, a man with dreams of becoming a Musketeer, but who finds much trouble on his road to achieving this goal. Eventually he meets three Musketeers named Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who end up in a duel with D’Artagnan. This is quickly put to an end when the guards of Cardinal Richelieu step in to stop them, and the four men unite to defeat them, creating a bond between the men and a heated feud with Richelieu.

If done correctly, as you can see in Sherlock Holmes and others, a stylized recreation of another time period can be a hell of a lot of fun. While we don’t know who will direct and star in this movie yet, this is already a project with some promise of being an exciting future project to keep an eye on.

[Source: Variety]