Game of Thrones scribe Bryan Cogman to write Sword in the Stone remake
By Dan Selcke
The actors on Game of Thrones aren’t the only ones receiving career boosts. Bryan Cogman, who wrote episodes like “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” “Oathkeeper,” and “Kill the Boy,” will be adapting a live-action remake of The Sword in the Stone for Disney. Released in 1963, The Sword in the Stone tells the story of a young King Arthur’s tutelage under Merlin. It was the final animated Disney movie released while Walt Disney was still alive.
If the remake is a success, Cogman stands to get quite a lot of work out of this, as The Sword in the Stone is only the first in a series of novels by T.H. White about the life of King Arthur. With Hollywood currently frothing at the mouth for Marvel Universe-like franchises, this series could go places. If not, good for Cogman for scoring the gig. It’ll make a good companion piece for the Magic: The Gathering movie he’s currently working on for Fox.
The irony of Cogman being tapped to write the screenplay for The Sword in the Stone is that it’s possible Disney was inspired to remake the movie in the first place because of the success of Game of Thrones. Fantasy is a hot property right now (also witness Warner Bros. upcoming six-film series about Arthur) and it’s hard not to think that Game of Thrones had something to do with that.
Bryan Cogman
Elsewhere, Cogman gave an affecting interview about Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, his alma mater. “I was never going to be an athlete in any way, shape or form,” Cogman said. “I was okay academically. So, if I didn’t have these arts programs, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
Cogman credits Churchhill’s drama department with developing his skills as a writer, a point that bears repeating when stories about arts programs in schools being cut crop up regularly. NBC Washington, which conducted the interview, also mentions that Cogman gave it via Skype from Belfast, as if we needed more reason to pay attention to the goings-on there now that the show is shooting Season 6.