Heath Ledger’s 2001 Medieval Comedy Could’ve Got a Netflix Sequel — Thank God It Didn’t

Summary:

• Before coming to international fame thanks to Brokeback Mountain and Christopher Nolan ’s The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger starred in a fan-favorite period comedy the reputation of which was jeopardized by Netflix ’s intervention.
• The movie initially follows a peasant squire who embarks on a participation in a jousting tournament that his master didn’t manage to win.
• As the film’s director recently revealed, Netflix was pretty much down for a sequel, but then shut the idea down after consulting their algorithms.

Heath Ledger’s acting career could have surely been flourishing even now if it hadn’t been for his tragic death back in 2008 — but his legacy still lives on.

Before the actor rose to wild prominence thanks to his leading role in a Western-coded romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, Ledger starred in a 2001 comedy that Netflix would be quick to pick up for a sequel — but luckily didn’t.

Literally at the same time with prominent Baz Luhrmann and his Moulin Rouge!, director Brian Helgeland started a trend of mixing distant historical eras up within one movie. His beloved medieval comedy A Knight’s Tale, starring Heath Ledger as a peasant squire who enters a jousting tournament replacing his late master, is a peculiar fusion of the 14th century plot vibes and a soundtrack coming straight from the 1970s.

Upon its release in 2001, the movie didn’t look very impressive for critics, ending up with 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, but nonetheless broke even in the box office and got a lot of love from the audience.

In one of his recent interviews Helgeland revealed that, even though more than twenty years after A Knight’s Tale was released, the film actually had all chances to get a sequel, probably even under Netflix’s helm.

According to the director, the crew had had some ideas for a second movie even at the time of the first one’s release, but Sony, which was holding all the rights for A Knight’s Tale at that time, wasn’t into the new plot that the director was having in mind.

Helgeland then came up with another, and quite logical, idea of bringing to the main stage a teenage daughter of Ledger’s character that would presumably pass away during a war. That time Sony got genuinely interested, hinting that they could eventually team up with Netflix for a promising sequel.

The latter was the one that shattered everyone’s dreams as the streaming used their highly advanced algorithms to see whether a second film would get overall success — and, according to those algorithms, it wouldn’t.

Whether it’s a significant loss for Helgeland himself or not, fans think that it’s an actual blessing in disguise given Netflix’s passion for producing sequels that nobody asked for or liked.

The streaming’s most recent releases come as an even bigger relief for A Knight’s Tale’s legacy as many are struck with the fact that Netflix greenlighted Zack Snyder’s disastrous sequel for Rebel Moon.

Turns out that it’s Snyder who got all the heat while Heath Ledger’s movie is kept safe.

Source: Inverse