$60 million feature which boils down to a son, an apple and a father’s aim with a bow and arrow!

The legendary but much disputed historical figure of William Tell is set to receive his own feature, a massive $60 million adventure from producers Fred Caruso (a former frequent collaborator of Brian De Palma) and D. Constantine Conte (who way back when executive produced Conan) through their Caruso/Conte 2010 Pan-European Fund.

Heroes stunt coordinator Ian Quinn will make his directorial debut - probably killing off the Kevin Reynolds adaptation which was delayed because of the strike. Reynolds was the director of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, a character whose legend is very similar to Tell.

Cornelius Schregle’s script is based on Friedrich von Schiller’s 1805 play. The story chronicles the life of the 14th century Swiss hero who, as legend has it, was forced to shoot an apple off his son’s head to win his freedom from Austrian occupiers.

Pre-production is set to begin in the fall. Pic will shoot in Lucerne and other regions in Switzerland, with release scheduled for 2010.

Unlike the figure of Robin Hood - Tell’s mythology isn’t quite as rich and it mostly does boil down to the incident with his son and the apple but I’m sure they will flesh something out.

Kiera Chaplin, the Northern Irish granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin has been cast as Tell’s wife - her biggest role to date. No word on the casting of Tell just yet but I have horrible visions or Orlando Bloom landing the part!

source - variety

Thanks for visiting us at Obsessed With Film, we update several times a day, so if you haven't done so yet you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also sign up to receive updates via e-mail.