I looked up IMDb to see what other movies in the past that have had their titles start with the words ‘once upon a time, there was Once Upon A Time In America starring Robert De Niro, then there’s Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon A Time In Mexico, and the old spaghetti western Once Upon A Time In The West, and there’s the Once Upon A Time In India, but thanks to screenwriting team Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, the world may now have ONCE UPON A TIME IN HELL…
According to Hollywood Reporter, Shipman and McGreevy’s script has been in the Black List of most liked screenplays last year, Phoenix Pictures has bought ONCE UPON A TIME IN HELL which is a re-imagining of the Alexandre Dumas‘ classic revenge tale The Count of Monte Cristo, the new story is set in modern London’s organized crime underworld.
The intention is to develop a Hollywood-style underground gangster film in the same tone as Michael Mann’s Heat and Collateral.
That’s not all Shipman and McGreevy have in store for us. They’ve also sold their adventure script PENDRAGON, to New Regency, The story is another take on Camelot gang: Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad and more, by providing them with origin stories, of how each came to be and how they met and become Knight at the Round Table, much like what J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek did to the Enterprise crew this past summer.
By the way, PENDRAGON or Pen Draig means head dragon or chief dragon, a figurative status for a leader like Arthur.
It seems so easy for Shipman and McGreevy to get away with calling their scripts original work, basing them on tales as old as time
