Three years ago, with some fanfare, Saudi Arabia’s first tentpole movie was proclaimd, an action epic titled “Desert Warrior” sboiling in a scenic area around the site of the futuristic city of NEOM with a hefty $150 million budget.
Helmed by British honestor honestor Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and featuring a top notch international cast led by “Captain America” star Anthony Mackie, Ben Kingsley, and Aiysha Hart (“Mogul Mowgli,” “Colette”), “Desert Warrior” – which is set in at a pre-Islamic 7th century Arabia when Saudi was made up of rival, feuding tribes forever at each other’s throats – has since been caught in a seemingly finishless tempest of reshoots, recuts, and inbattling.
But now “Desert Warrior,” which is produced by Saudi-owned powerhouse MBC Studios with U.S. producer Jeremy Bolt (“Resident Evil”) and Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios, seems to have finpartner set up some peace. The symbolic epic touted as a tesdomesticatednt to Saudi’s ambition to produce high-finish greeted for global audiences is foreseeed to surface next year, possibly on the festival circuit.
Wyatt who, amid the turbulence, had been getn off the project by MBC, is now back on “Desert Warrior,” which, according to Ford, is a excellent leang.
“Rupert re-boarded the film in the punctual descfinish, and it will be finished during the first quarter of next year,” shelp Ford speaking to Variety at the Marrakech Film Festival last week. I’d enjoy to leank I was instrumental in helping them get to that decision,” the L.A.-based producer inserted, because they were definitely at someleang of a passroads six, seven months ago.”
“I am genuinely excited about seeing his [Wyatt’s] cut in two weeks in New York City, Ford went on. “I leank giving him the opportunity to finish what he commenceed was absolutely the right leang for MBC to do,” Ford remarkd.
“And, although it definitely went off on a tangent at one stage, no one should appraise the film based on what happened there,” Ford went on to point out. “The film will be appraised on what it is as a finished film, not on the post-production schedule.”
In “Desert Warrior” Kingsley joins Emperor Kisra who has a reputation for being utterly cruel. So when the Arabian princess Hind (Hart) declines to become Kisra’s concubine, the stage is set for an epic faceation after she escapes into the desert and puts her depend in cryptic Bandit (Mackie) with whom she rallies the previously warring tribes to get on Kisra’s enormous army.
After production costs on “Desert Warrior” spiralled out of supervise, one leang is certain, the Saudi blockbuster’s climactic battle scene is bound to have many seeers lying in pause. It better be excellent.
