Universal Pictures is already engaged in one battle of similar projects against a rival studio, as just yesterday they shifted the release date of their Snow White and the Huntsman to compete more directly with Relativity Media's The Brothers Grimm: Snow White. It might look on the surface that they're doing the same thing with the new script they've acquired called Arabian Knights, given that FilmDistrict is also hard at work on an Arabian Nights adaptation starring Liam Hemsworth. But according to the Variety article we don't know anything about Knights except that it's "radically different" from the Hemsworth one, so we can put that concern to rest.

But now that there's not a head-to-head battle to choose sides in, what can we analyze about this? Not much. The script comes from Kyle Ward, who has done a lot of writing you haven't seen yet-- the script for the video game adaptation Kane and Lynch that may eventually star Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx, and Hitman 2, which hired a director a year ago but hasn't seen much movement since then. Ward is also at work on adapting the video game Devil May Cry for Screen Gems, so between all of those and whatever Arabian Knights is, he'll get a movie to the screen sooner or later.

On a final note, I'm 90% sure Ward's script has nothing to do with the Hanna-Barbera Arabian Knights cartoon series, but you can never be sure about these things. They make for a handy image to use in the meantime, though.