When people think about German history they usually only think only as far back as about 1914, but now a new movie from 20th Century Fox is taking you much further back - namely to the first century. The studio is now crafting a film about the ancient Germanic hero Arminius who led his army to victory over the Romans in the Batttle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, helping Germania hold their land from the invading forces.
Deadline says that first-time writer Frank Moll wrote the script for Arminius and that Wolfgang Petersen and Julie Yorn are on-board to produce. The trade says that the story will start in the hero's childhood, as he was actually a German who was trained to be a Roman soldier. Upon learning of the Roman's want to invade Germania, however, he switched teams to defend the motherland and at the age of 25 unified the Germanic states and delt Rome their greatest loss under the rule of Augustus Caesar.
While they don't come around that often, stories of ancient Rome and Greece tend to actually do fairly well at the box office. There are the examples of Gladiator and 300 of course, but even Immortals was able to pull in $226 million globally on a $75 million budget. Warner Bros. has the 300 sequel, Rise of an Empire, due out next year, so perhaps Fox is simply trying to jump aboard a trend while the getting is good. It sounds like an interesting enough story, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.
