The Knight Templars are at it again. First, the brouhaha was about heresy (remember that The Da Vinci Code was banned in several countries); now it's about the more mundane matter of money — or lack thereof.
Budgeted at more than US$ 30 million, Arn the Knight Templar is the most expensive production ever made in Scandinavia. The European mega-production has been mired in controversy since last Monday, when Swedish public broadcaster SVT announced that it was withdrawing its support from the project, which is currently in the editing phase. (Money came from about a half dozen countries, though Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri is the chief producer.)
Directed by Danish filmmaker Peter Flinth, Arn the Knight Templar is based on bestselling novelist Jan Guillou's trilogy about the (fictional) Swedish crusader Arn Magnusson. The film boasts an international cast, including Stellan Skarsgård, Vincent Perez, Simon Callow, Sofia Helin, and newcomer Joakim Nätterqvist in the title role.
Arn the Knight Templar is supposed to be screened in two parts, and later it'll be reformatted as a miniseries for Swedish TV.
Had Arn been a Hollywood movie, it would have been a blockbuster every where in the world. But it's Swedish, so not that many people relatively speaking saw it. that's unfortunate because the movie is much better than Kingdom of Heaven and other Hollywood shit that people make and that make much more money. People shold stop being sto stupid to go watch something just because it was made in Hollywood. Other places can make movies too, just as good or much better. Even big, epic productions.
I liked the movie. Not the greatest, but enjoyable.