LOS ANGELES, Jan 6 — Disney has approached the director of Gladiator, The Martian, and Robin Hood to steer a saga based on the younger years of King Arthur’s mentor, the wizard Merlin.

T. A. Barron’s 12-part series of novels, The Merlin Saga, has been selected for cinematic adaptation by Disney, which has now approached Ridley Scott to produce and direct.

Both Scott and his production company Scott Free are involved in negotiations over The Merlin Saga.

In addition, noted Variety, Disney has also discussed Sword in the Stone with Scott.

It would be a live-action movie sharing its name with the Walt Disney animated classic from 1963.

Disney has recently reworked Sleeping Beauty (1959) as Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (1950) as the live-action 2015 movie Cinderella, and 1991’s Beauty and the Beast as the highest-grossing film of 2017. Aladdin is underway for a May 2019 release.

The story of King Arthur’s wizened, wizardly advisor Merlin has previously been adapted as a 1998 two-part NBC mini-series starring Sam Neill, Helena Bonham Carter, James Earl Jones, Rutger Hauer, Lena Headey, Miranda Richardson, and Isabella Rossellini.

In 2008, John Hurt (of Ridley Scott’s Alien) co-starred in the BBC TV series Merlin which, like T. A. Barron’s saga, conjured up an origin story for its titular character.

As a director, Ridley Scott helmed the just-released biographical kidnapping drama All the Money in the World, and has wartime film Battle of Britain as well as a sequel to Alien: Covenant among his upcoming features.

As a producer, he is involved in a dozen more film projects, including 2018’s Ewan McGregor and Rashida Jones romantic drama Zoe and 2019 James Mangold crime thriller The Force. — AFP-Relaxnews