The movie may be called Arthur the King, and Mark Wahlberg may be starring in it, but he won’t be suiting up in any armor or wielding Excalibur. Instead, the film is a true story of a dog who became a viral sensation for tagging along on an extreme racing team’s journey across Ecuador.
Yep, it’s a dog movie.
Unfortunately, Wahlberg won’t be playing the dog but I don’t put it past him to voice a canine someday, if he hasn’t already. The film is an adaptation of Mikael Lindnord’s book Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home, about the author’s 2014 race through the Amazon rainforest as part of Team Peak Performance. After offering some meat to a stray dog, Lindnord found the badly-wounded canine simply wouldn’t go away and followed him through much of the 400+ mile journey. The dog was named Arthur after King Arthur, naturally, and was adopted by the team who nursed him back to health with the help of social media contributors and other donors who fell in love with the story.
Chicago Fire creator Michael Brandt will adapt the script, but no director has been named. Wahlberg has been doing better with family movies than his action stuff, anyway, so this move makes sense. He managed to make something out of the Daddy’s Home comedies and last year’s surprise hit Instant Family. An inspirational dog movie should be right up his alley, and then we can worry about getting him into an actual King Arthur movie later. [Deadline]
